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 spermatozoon-like 
organisms whose structure permits of comparison with these nematocystoid polar 
corpuscles, 
Prof. Biitschli? regards the capsule as comparable to the nematocysts 
of the Celenterates. 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 Celenterates. But, knowing the signification of 
urticating organs, I admit that I do not well understand in what way these 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 capture more easy. 
And further, among other repetitions of his theory, he says: 
We have, in effect, here, all the phenomena of sexual union (rapprochement) ; 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 
Biitschliasevere 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 réle 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”), notwithstanding 
1 Ztschr. f. wiss. Zool., 1881, xxxv, p. 638; Bronn’s Thier-Reich, 1882, 1, p. 603. 
2 Bronn’s Thier-Reich, 1882, 1, pp. 599, 600. 
3 Biitschli’s own observations for the Myxosporidia. The same very probable for 
Hydra (Jickeli, Morphol. Jabrb., vii, p. 373). Without assigning any reason, Lutz 
doubts Biitschli’s observation (Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenkde, 1889, v, p. 87). 
+ Journ. de Microgr., 1883, vil, pp. 204, 277, 278. 
