THE SPERMATOPHORE IN ARENICOLA 1025 
1. It is proven by cytological studies on aposporous and apog- 
amous material. By ‘apospory’ (Vines, Journal of Bot., ’78, 
p. 355) is meant the direct production of a gametophyte from the 
tissue of a sporophyte without the intervention of a spore. ‘Ap- 
ogamy’ (DeBarry, Bot. Zeit., ’78, p. 449) means the growth of 
a sporophyte as a vegetative outgrowth from the gametophyte. 
This definition is tentative, as later writers, Strasburger, Farmer 
and Digby, etc., are not yet agreed on the limitations of apogamy 
and parthenogenesis. 
Farmer and Digby succeeded, in four forms with which they 
experimented, in inducing apogamy, causing the omission of 
sporogenesis. ‘They derived the prothallia directly from abor- 
tive sporangia or from pinnae. Such gametophytes have approx- 
imately the diploid instead of the usual haploid number of chro- 
mosomes. They conclude therefore ‘‘that there is no necessary 
relation between the periodic reduction in the number of chro- 
mosomes and the alternation of generations.”’ 
Again, Yamanouchi, in his study of apogamy in Nephrodium, 
obtained a sporophyte with the haploid instead of the customary 
diploid number of chromosomes. 
2. The independence of the alternation of generations and 
reduction is further demonstrated by the fact that reduction may 
occur before, after, or during the sexual act, that is, in either the 
sporophyte or the gametophyte generation. I realize that in 
such a statement of the argument I am begging the question. I 
am merely stating the facts as they appear from my standpoint. 
Whether the sporophyte and gametophyte of the archegoniates 
are phylogenetically continuous with the spore-bearing and gam- 
ete-bearing generations of the algae or whether the sporophyte 
of the archegoniates is a new structure, developed out of the 
fertilized egg and unrelated to the spore-bearing generation of 
the ancestral alga is a moot point. Botanists are far fromagreed as 
to the course of the evolution of the higher plants from their 
algal ancestors. The Chlorophyceae has been designated the 
probable ancestral group and both Chara and Coleochaete are 
pointed out by different investigators as probable connecting links. 
With equal conviction other botanists, notably Schenk recently, 
