86 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 

 Upon the same subject Prof. Biitschli' remarks that: 



Balbiani's view that they [the filaments] represent male fertilizing elements com- 

 parable to the antherozoids of the cryptogams, may be entirely rejected, as, apart from 

 the general improbability of this view (which, moreover, is not further supported by 

 actual observations), there are, at present known, no vegetable sjiermatozoon-like 

 organisms whose structure permits of comparison with these nematocystoid polar 

 corpuscles. 



Prof. Biitschli^ regards the capsule as comparable to the nematocysts 

 of the Coelenterates, This view is, he says, supported by its develop- 

 ment, the filament being originally in the extruded condition and only 

 subsequently becoming retracted and coiled.^ Further Biitschli re- 

 marks that: 



One might suspect that the capsular filaments serve for the attachment of the 

 spores to other fishes or to the food of the same. 



Taking the two together, I interpret Prof. Biitschli's meaning to be 

 that morphologically they are nematocysts, but that here they function 

 differently. 



Replying to the preceding criticisms of his theory, Balbiani* says: 



This last observer [Biitschli] compares with reason these filaments to the urticat- 

 ing organs or trichocysts of the Cojlenterates. But, knowing the signification of 

 urticating organs, I admit that I do not well understand in what way tliese organs 

 can serve psorosperms which are completely immovable and do not nourish them- 

 selves, for one knows that the trichocysts have for their object only the paralysis of 

 prey in order to render its cax)ture more easy. 



And further, among other repetitions of his theory, he says: 

 We have, in eff"ect, here, all the phenomena of sexual union (rajiprochement) ; first, 

 the embrace (rapprochement) of two individuals; then the presence of a female 

 element, the sarcodic globule, becoming free at that moment; and, finally, filaments 

 which I have compared to antherozoids. In a word, the process recalls involun- 

 tarily to the observer a cryptogamic sexual generation. But these interpretations, 

 although emitted with reserve, have drawn upon me on the part of Leuckart and 

 Biitschli a severe criticism. These authors prefer to compare them to urticant organs. 

 One can respond by asking them what would here be the physiological signification 

 of urticant organs, which are offensive or defensive weapons. What would be, in 

 these organisms, their role and utility? At all events the phenomena in question 

 deserve to be studied anew. I was then as much, if not more, in the right to 

 consider them as antherozoids, than Leuckart and Biitschli to make of them urticant 

 organs. We had, I believe, equal reasons, the German observer and I, to sustain our 

 interpretation. 



Curiously enough Balbiani shows no indication of abandoning his 

 antherozoid theory (on the contrary it is further elaborated by the 

 designation of the sporoplasmas the " female element "),notwithstaiiding 



1 Ztschr. f. wiss. Zool., 1881, xxxv, p. 638; Bronn's Thier-Reich, 1882, i, p. 603. 



2 Bronn's Thiev-Reich, 1882, i, pp. 599, 600. 



^Biitschli's own observations for the Myxosporidia. The same very probable for 

 Hydra (Jickeli, Morphol. Jahrb., viii, p. 373). Without assigning any reason, Lutz 

 doubts Biitschli's observation (Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasiteukde, 1889, v, p. 87). 



* Journ. de Microgr., 1883, vir, pp. 204, 277, 278. 



