describes as ovules without envelopes consisting of a papilla (the neck) which becomes perforated, giving the spermatozoid access to the embryo-sac within. His figures of the process of fertilisation are extremely interesting as they show how completely he was dominated by the theory of Schleiden to which allusion has already been made. The head of the sperm is represented as entering the "embryo-sac," and there becoming encysted to form the embryo just as the tip of the pollen tube was supposed to do in flowering plants. The further development of the embryo and its various organs are traced and figured, however, in the most admirable way. At the conclusion of his paper Suminski states that in view of the presence of male organs and ovules, and the occurrence of fertilisation, the cryptogamy of ferns does not exist in a physiological sense, and ceases to have any validity as a peculiar character. A remark which he follows up by the statement that ferns must on the existing classification be referred to the Monocotyledons.
In certain respects no doubt Suminski's paper is fantastic—more especially the circumstantial details given of the process of fertilisation. But, however we may criticise his work the credit belongs to Suminski of showing (1) that sexual organs are borne on the prothallus, (2) that the embryo fern plant is produced as the result of fertilisation. Unlike Nägeli, to Suminski came the happy inspiration of looking for the female organs in the position where common sense indicated they ought to be found.
Suminski's paper instantly aroused universal interest, and the whole of his assertions were at first categorically denied by the German botanist Wigand.
We may now trace Henfrey's attitude to Suminski's work.
His first notice occurs in the body of a review of Lindley's "Introduction" in the first volume of his Botanical Gazette, and shows him to have been profoundly sceptical, if not contemptuous, of the occurrence of fertilisation in the prothallus of the fern. His words are "this (i.e. Suminski's discovery) appears to have little but originality to render it worthy of notice." That appeared in February 1849.
Writing at greater length of Suminski's work in the Annals
