In the second class, if we count conjugation as a simple form of fertilization, there are only two types of reproductive methods.
1st. Reproduction from an asexual spore.
2d. Reproduction from an oospore formed by the combination of two sexual cells.
In the vast majority of plant species these two types are used by the individuals alternately.
The extraordinary similarity of the reproductive process, as shown in the examples I have given, Achlya, Spirogyra, and Vaucheria among algæ, the moss, the fern, and the flowering plant, a similarity which becomes the more marked the more the details of each case and of the cases of plants which form links between these great classes are studied, points to a community of origin of all plants in some few or one primeval ancestor. And to this inference the study of plant structure and morphology, together with the evidence of palæobotany among other circumstances, lends confirmatory evidence, and all modern discoveries, as for instance that of the rudimentary prothallium formed by the pollen of angiosperms, tend to the smoothing of the path by which the descent of the higher plants from simpler types will, as I think, be eventually shown.
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