X 68 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [September 



nuclear membrane. In other cases the appearance is more that of a 

 great many lumps of some plastic substance thrown into a tight mass. 

 Whether these appearances are normal or not I cannot say. That 

 they represent the only appearances that the present material shows 

 is certain. In the face of the numerous and fairly uniform accounts 

 of sporogenesis in which no such phenomena have been recorded, it 

 is certainly entirely proper at present to ascribe these unusual phe- 

 nomena to the effects of the reagents. Nothing any more nearly 

 resembling synapsis was seen. It should be noted that of some 

 hundred strobili cut only five showed cells in this stage. However, 

 three of these strobili are the only ones that have shown the reduction 

 divisions. A few sporangia had cells like those shown in -jig. 14, 

 where the chromosomes are beginning to appear, being almost com- 

 pletely concealed in a mass of granular matter. In the figure the 

 difference in intensity of stain between the chromosomes and the 

 imbedding substance has been greatly exaggerated for the sake of 

 clearness. One gets two views of these developing chromosomes, 

 one in which the chromosomes are mostly seen in cross-section and 

 one in which they lie lengthwise. In some fashion (which the density 

 and abundance of the imbedding substance prevent being made out 

 clearly) out of this comes a rather sharply pointed spindle at whose 

 equator are arranged the short apparently bivalent chromosomes 

 (fig. ij). Some preparations seemed to favor the idea that these 

 apparently bivalent chromosomes then split longitudinally. After 

 passing to the poles (fig. 16) they became surrounded by a nuclear 

 membrane, but did not, in the few preparations of this stage observed, 

 lose their identity in a resting nucleus. A very few cases of the 

 homotypic mitosis are shown in the preparations and all of these are 

 in the telophase, as shown in fig. 17. Walls are not formed till after 

 second division. 



Beyond the telophase of the second division the preparations show 

 nothing until after the formation of the wall around the young spores. 

 These are so badly shrunken and distorted that no attempt has been 

 made to figure them. It is observable, however, that the nucleus is 

 at first rather small and oval and lies to one side of the spore cavity, 

 most of which is occupied by an enormous vacuole. Fig. 18 shows 

 a microspore after the contents have become more abundant. At this 



