Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 09.djvu/62

SPORE 36 SPRAGUE, LEVI L. brought about. Every one knows how gardeners propagate many species of plants by means of cuttings. As a rule the more lowly the plant the more easy is it to make a successful cutting, and the smaller may the cutting be. Thus, a single leaf or even a small part of leaf of a moss plant, will often, if cut off and placed in a suitable soil, grow into a complete moss plant. In the true mode of reproduction the growth is not con- tinuous. Certain cells of a plant are set apart for this function. These cells are called spores. In plants higher than the Thallophytes, such cells do not grow directly into a plant like that from which they have come, but they give rise to a plant which in its turn, when it reaches maturity, produces cells of two sorts, male and female, which unite with one another, and then from the new cell of dual origin there grows a plant like that from which the spore originally came. Thus, on the under surface of the fronds of ferns there may often be seen many small spore cases. The spores fall to the ground, and produce a little green plant called the prothallium of the fern. The prothallium produces the sex elements. These unite, and from their union grows a new "fern," This indirect mode of reproduction is spoken of as the alternation of generations. In the Thallophytes (algaa, fungi, etc.), the cells which function as spores receive a variety of names, such as telentospores, aredospores, sporidia, sty- lospores, tetraspores, zoospores (which are motile), conidia. These names are meant to emphasize some point in their mode of origin and development. In the Bryophytes (liverworts and mosses) and in the Pteridophytes (ferns, horsetails, etc.), they are always called simply spores. But some of the Pteridophytes (vascular cryptogams) , for instance salvinia, produce two kinds of spores, male and female, and hence they are called heterosporous ferns, horsetails, or lycopods as the case may be. In the Spermophytes also (seed plants or phan- erogams) the spores are of two kinds. The pollen grains represent the male spores, microspores; and the female spores are contained within the ovule. The sexual generation, the prothallium, which is formed from the spore, loses its character as an independent plant as we ascend the scale of plants from the vas- cular cryptogams to the phanerogams. In homosporous ferns it lives for a long time ; in the hetero^orous ferns they, the male and female prothallia, never become entirely separate from the spores, though they burst through the spore cases; in the coniferss they remain entirely with- in the spore case. In the phanerogams they are still further reduced; the ovule is the macrosporangium. SPOTTED FEVER, the name given to a form of malignant typhus fever, which is accompanied by a rash or eruption of red spots. See Typhus Fever. SPOTTISWOODE, WILLIAM, an English mathematician; born in London, Jan. 11, 1825; was educated at Har- row and Balliol College, Oxford. For some time he lectured at Balliol, and in 1846 he succeeded his father as the head of the great printing house of Eyre & Spottiswoode. Though throughout life an energetic man of business, he found time for much original work as well as for travels in Eastern Russia, Croatia, and Hungary. His contributions to the "Proceedings" of the Royal Society and of the London Mathematical Society and his admirable lectures on the "Pol- arization of Light" (1874), are known to all students. Spottiswoode was treas- urer of the British Association (1861- 1874), of the Royal Institution (1865- 1873), and of the Royal Society (1871- 1878) ; president of Section A (1865) and of the British Association itself (1878), of the London Mathematical So- ciety (1870-1872), and of the Royal So- ciety from 1879 till his death in London, June 27, 1883. SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT-HOUSE, a small village in Virginia, 55 miles N. by W. of Richmond, the scene of one of the most desperate battles of the Amer- ican Civil War. On May 10, 1864, dur- ing the Wilderness campaign. Grant attacked Lee in his earthworks, and was repulsed with dreadful slaughter; yet on the next day he wrote to the Secre- tary of War, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and on the 12th repeated the assault, when Hancock's corps carried and held the "bloody angle." The next morning Lee, unable to bear his share of the heavy losses, withdrew within an inner line of intrenchments, and on the 20th Grant, having failed to dislodge him, moved round his flank toward Richmond. SPRAGUE, LEVI L., an American educator, bom in Beekman, N. Y., in 1844. He was educated at the Wyoming Seminary and Allegheny College, Pa. His entire educational career was spent at Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, Pa., where he began teaching in 1868, and of which he became president in 1882. He took a prominent part in Methodist Episcopal affairs and was trustee of Wyoming Seminary, Syracuse Univer- sity, the Wyoming Conference, as well