Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/226

The views entertained on the subject of the development and propagation of the lower Cryptogams down to the year 1850 were very uncertain and fluctuating. In some Algae, Fungi, and Lichens certain organs of multiplication and propagation were known, in others they were quite unknown; some forms appeared in places and under circumstances which seemed to necessitate the assumption of spontaneous generation; in 1827 Meyen declared that the small Algae, known as 'Priestley's matter,' which are formed in stagnant water and even in closed vessels, are produced by free generation, and Kützing endeavoured to show this by experiment in 1833; some Fungi were regarded as diseased growths from other organisms, many were supposed to spring up spontaneously, though they might be capable at the same time of propagating themselves by spores; this view was shared by even the best botanists with regard to the most simple Fungi up to 1850. But the systematic investigation of the Algae and Fungi was as little hindered by the notion of spontaneous generation after 1850 as that of Phanerogams had been in the 17th century by the same notion; it was however at first affected by the view put forth by Hornschuch in 1821 and by Kützing in 1833, that the simplest of all Alga-cells (Protococcus and Palmella), once produced spontaneously, could develop according to circumstances into a variety of Algae, and even of Lichens and Mosses; as some observers even now consider Penicillium and Micrococcus to be the starting-points of very different Fungi. There was a difficulty also in drawing the boundary-line between the lower animals and plants; the difficulty was solved by classing all objects capable of independent movement with animals; thus whole families of Algae (the Volvocineae, Bacillariaceae, and others) were claimed by the zoologists, and when the swarmspores of a genuine Alga were seen for the first time in the act of escaping, the phenomenon was described as the changing of the plant into an animal. Trentepohl in 1807, and Unger in 1830, explained in this way