THE president's ADDRESS. 177 



general term syngamy. As a result of the syngamy of two 

 gametes of opposite sexes, a single cell is produced which is 

 termed the zygote ("fertilised ovum," "oosperm," etc.). The 

 zygote then starts on a process of energetic cell-division, from 

 which there results ultimately a new individual. 



Such, very briefly, is the nature of the sexual process, that 

 remarkable phenomenon which moved even so pious a man as 

 Milton to put into the mouth of Adam a speech questioning the 

 "wisdom of the Creator in having invented it. When we turn 

 now to the invisible world of the Protista, we find sexual 

 phenomena to be of widespread occurrence. The process in 

 these primitive beings shows only some slight differences of 

 secondary importance from that seen in the higher forms of 

 life. In the first place, since the Protist individual does not 

 consist of more than one eel], and since a gamete is a single cell, 

 we find that in Protista a gamete is an entire individual ; such 

 individuals arise from ordinary individuals at certain periods of 

 the life-cycle, and proceed to syngamy. In the second place, the 

 gametes of opposite sexes are sometimes, but not always, visibly 

 different from each other. In many cases the microscope can 

 reveal no difference 'whatever between them, and sometimes they 

 cannot even be distinguished in any way from the ordinary 

 individuals of the species. And, finally, the bodies of the gametes 

 do not always fuse as a whole during the act of syngamy, but 

 sometimes merely interchange portions of their nuclei, which 

 then undergo fusion within the body of each gamete separately. 

 These facts are very interesting as indicating the origin and 

 subsequent course of sexual differentiation, but they do not alter 

 in any way our conception of the nature of the sexual process. 

 Syngamy is a union of two cell-individuals, gametes, which pair, 

 and then their whole bodies, or at least their nuclei, undergo a 

 process of fusion, after which the cell-individual enters upon 

 a renewed lease of reproductive power. Syngamy, in short, is 

 essentially nothing more than a process of intermingling of 

 nuclear substance, chromatin, derived in typical cases from two 

 distinct cell-individuals. 



Now when we come to consider the occurrence of sex and 

 syngamy amongst the Protista, we find a curious fact, too re- 

 markable to be a mere coincidence. Syngamy appears to be of 

 universal occurrence in the Protozoa and the unicellular plants, 



