80 SHACHT, ON SPERMATOZOID IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
carbons, as well as of fatty matter, cannot be directly proved, 
although they probably exist. 
16. ‘The best preservative os for the spermatozoids of 
the Lquisetacee and Ferns are a solution of tannin (10 
grains to the ounce), and one of corrosive sublimate (1 grain 
to the ounce). But for those of the Characez, the best 
medium is diluted glycerine. The cilia are best seen in 
spermatozoids which have been slowly dried on the object- 
glass; but, in this case, the body changes its form more or 
less, or it may be partially or entirely dissolved. 
17. As being plant-cells without any cellulose coat, and 
containing a cell-juice with a granular matter dispersed in 
it, the spermatozoids correspond with the zoospores of the 
Algze and of certain Fungi, from which they differ, however, 
very essentially in the nature of their function, and their 
ineapability of undergoing any development into a new 
individual. 
18. In their cellular nature and their chemical compo- 
sition, their richness in albuminous compounds, starch, and 
other elements, which are also met with, particularly in the 
pollen-tube, they approach very nearly to the latter or to the 
pollen-grain, from which it is emitted, and whose cellulose 
membrane, whose presence, however, is an essential distinction 
between pollen- tube and sper matozoid, is notdirectly concerned 
in the act of impregnation. The same materials of which the 
contents of the pollen-tube consist appear very manifestly to 
exist also in the spermatozoid. The potential correspondence 
between the spermatozoid and the contents of the pollen- 
tube, lastly, is confirmed by the process of impregnation 
in Peronospora Alsine, which takes place without the aid of 
any spermatic filaments, by the commingling of the con- 
tents of the antheridium with those of the female cell, which 
have become agglomerated into a naked globular mass 
(Befruchtungskugel.) 
ig. But if the spermatozoids of the vegetable kingdom 
are celis of a peculiar kind, those of animals, when suf- 
ficiently examined with good microscopes, must turn out to 
be so hkewise ; because it seems necessary to assume a 
general correspondence between the two kingdoms in such 
an important particular. 
20. Lastly, the fact of the spermatozoids being of the 
nature of cells, adds an additional example to the number 
of cells having no cellulose coat, as the motile spores in the 
Alge and Fungi, the fertilisable elobules i in the Crypotogaima 
and Phenerogamia, &c.; but, like the foregoing membraneless 
