igit>] CHAMBERLAIN— STANGERIA PARADOXA 361 



At first, the blepharoplast is a solid, homogeneous body, but as it 

 increases in diameter it becomes vacuolate and soon appears to be 

 little more than a shell containing droplets of liquid (fig. 4). This 

 stage is reached before the body cell divides. During the division 

 of the body cell, the vacuolate blepharoplast breaks up into hun- 

 dreds of small granules which, for a short time, occupy the space 

 previously occupied by the blepharoplast (fig. 5). The daughter 

 nuclei immediately after the division of the body cell are smaller 

 than the blepharoplasts; but the nuclei increase rapidly in size, 

 while the group of granules remains stationary until it begins to 

 form the ciliated band. The beginning of the band takes place 

 during a rapid increase in the size of the sperm (fig. 6). Many of 

 the granules become elongated and have a distinct tendency to 

 arrange themselves in rows, forming a band one layer of granules 

 in thickness (fig. 7). From the entire surface of one side of this 

 band, stiff bristle-like cilia grow out. The young band is variously 

 twisted and curved, so that the bristles point in every direction, 

 some of them even toward the nucleus, but the band soon, turns 

 so that all the bristles face outward (fig. 8). As the band nears the 

 surface, the bristles prick through the cytoplasm and the growth 

 of the cytoplasm at this point is checked, so that a spiral groove 

 results. After piercing the cytoplasm, the bristles grow out into 

 long, slender cilia, which at first are compressed by the wall of the 

 sperm mother cell, but later extend outward and vibrate vigor- 

 ously when this wall breaks down. The mature sperm varies from 

 150 to 190/x in diameter, and its dense nucleus constitutes most of 

 its mass, the diameter of the nucleus being usually only about 20 n 

 less than that of the entire sperm, so that the cytoplasm containing 

 the spiral band is only a thin sheath. The number of turns in the 

 spiral varies from 5 to 7, but one peculiar sperm was found with a 

 long, narrow apex and 10 turns of the band (fig. 10). 



Female gametophyte.— In the young nucellus Lang (5) 

 found an axial row of 3 cells, the lowest of which became the 

 functioning megaspore. In my own material the earliest stages 

 showed archegonia shortly before the division which gives rise to 

 the ventral canal nucleus and the egg. The figure for this division 

 was observed only once, but it was not difficult to determine the 



