'27 



and fruit-bearing, still the believers in the sexual function declare 

 this may be explained on the ground of the prevention of sexual 

 activity. They cite as analogous cases, the swarm spores of 

 Ectocarpiis, The author says that the facts in reference to these 

 swarm spores are no more relevant to the case in question, the 

 analogy, therefore, no closer, than in the comparison of the sper- 

 matia about which Cornu writes, with the pollen grain of the 

 phanerogams. He says the organs are entirely different and the 

 plants to which they belong are very far from sustaining a close 

 relation to each other; what is to be gained, therefore, by com- 

 paring the development of a naked, ciliated swarm-spore with 

 the conidia of the ascomycetes which cluster about the twelve 

 celled trichogyne ? 



As the last and most conclusive evidence against the sexual 

 theory, he gives what is found in the latest edition of Brefeld's 

 '* Schimmelpilze,'' (Heft, vii, p. 57). Here it is claimed that 

 what was formerly looked upon as an unexplainable riddle, viz.: 

 Ascus fruit without the intervention of a sexual act, is clearly the 

 natural course of one method of a sexual reproduction, the high- 

 est member of which is the sporangium fruit As proof of this 

 conclusion Brefeld says that during the winter preceding the pub- 

 lication of his work, more than one hundred forms of spermatia, 

 chosen at random from many kinds of ascomycetes, were brought 

 to germination and development. Added to this were many cases 

 of new forms of spermatia never before tested. 



Contrasting the facts for and against the sexual theory, the 

 author says there can no longer be the least doubt existing. In 

 three cases, by a somewhat circuitous method of reasoning, the 

 probability of the sexual nature of the organ was established. In 

 none of these instances was it showm that the spermatia united 

 with the trichogyne. Add to this the improbability of the fer- 

 tilizing matter of the tiny spermatium being able to make its way, 

 as sometimes it must, through twenty-four trichogyne cells before 



r 



it can effect fertilization, and the evidence is very much weakened. 

 All the spermatia which have been subjected to careful treatment 

 have shown their ability to germinate and develop. Careful ex- 

 periments have shown that the ascus fruit can be asexually pro- 

 duced without the aid of the spermatia, and finally it may be 



