The study of extinct types has so far rendered no substantial help towards bridging the wide gap between the Filicales and the lower plants. As Mr Tansley[675] says in his admirable lectures on _The Evolution of the Filicinean Vascular System_, “The biggest gap in the plant kingdom at the present time is undoubtedly that which separates the Pteridophytes from the plants definitely below them in organisation, and directly we try to step behind the ferns we tumble into this abyss.” Resemblances long ago recognised between certain ferns and the cycads, a section of the Gymnosperms, were regarded by a few botanists as indications of blood-relationship, and the results of recent researches into the morphological characters of extinct Palaeozoic types are generally held to confirm these surmises. Prof. Chodat[676] of Geneva has recently challenged the validity of the arguments on which the affinity of cycads and ferns has been accepted by the great majority of botanists. Whether or not his criticisms stand the test of unbiassed examination, they must at least lead us to substitute a critical consideration of the facts for a mere repetition of conclusions which appeal to our imagination. Despite Prof. Chodat’s warning, we may still quote with confidence a phrase used in another connexion—ferns “are links in a chain and branches on the tree of life, with their roots in a past inconceivably remote[677].” [Sidenote: PTERIDOSPERMS] Transitional forms which are regarded as pointing to a common origin for ferns and cycads are known in abundance; other types have also been discovered which lead some authors to go so far as to derive the whole of the seed-bearing plants from an ancestry the descendants of which are represented by existing ferns. While hesitating to allow the ferns or fern-like plants the peculiar position of universal ancestors, we must admit that there is no group of plants with a history of greater importance from an evolutionary standpoint than that with which we are now concerned.