Hales (1727I 733) discussed the rotting of wounds, cankers, &c., but much had to be done with the microscope before any real progress was possible, and it is easily intelligible that until the theory of nutrition of the higher plants had been founded by the work of Ingenhouss, Priestley and De Saussure, the way was not even prepared for accurate knowledge of cryptogamic parasites and the diseases they induce.
Each class of flowerless or cryptogamic plants requires special treatment for the herbarium.
In cannel coals the prevailing constituents are the spores of cryptogamic plants, algae being rare or in many cases absent.
Ferns and other cryptogamic plants are in great variety and abundance.
Camerarius, professor of botany and medicine at Tubingen, published a letter on the sexes of plants, in which he refers to the stamens and pistils as the organs of reproduction, and states the difficulties he had encountered in determining the organs of Cryptogamic plants.