ON SAPROLEGNI^. 277 



this fading away of the granular appearance took place so 

 quickly that it might almost be termed sudden, and the proto- 

 plasmic mass was now in a condition apparently like that be- 

 fore the division, except that its granules were smaller and 

 probably more numerous, and the mass seemed more trans- 

 lucent than before. During the next three minutes a lar"re 

 number of small, clear, equidistant areas (e) made their 

 appearance in the now almost hyaline, fine-grained protoplasm, 

 and a curious, pale, watery look had replaced the dark grey ap- 

 pearance of the earlier stages. These bright vacuole-like spots 

 seemed approximately equal in number to the masses which 

 preceded them (d), and one could well believe that the clear 

 spaces form at points corresponding to the centres of the former 

 bodies; this, however, could not be decided. In three or four 

 minutes after the last condition was figured, the almost sudden 

 reappearance, so to speak, of the rounded or polygonal solid 

 masses occurred (f), as if the contents had gone back to the 

 state figured at d. This time, however, the separation of the 

 masses became more evident, and at ten minutes past 12 the 

 apex of the sporangium gave way suddenly, and the Avhole 

 mass of separated blocks of protoplasm suddenly flowed out 

 into the surrounding water, and remained at the mouth of the 

 zoosporangium as a spherical clump of protoplasmic globules 

 (figs. 3 and 4). 



The following peculiarities concerning these bodies and their 

 exit were noticed. At the moment before the apex of the 

 zoosporangium bursts the isolated, though closely packed, 

 masses of protoplasm showed slight amoeboid movements, and 

 during the rapid expulsion were actively changing their form ; 

 the instant they reached the exterior, however, they all became 

 strictly spherical, if free, slightly polygonal if compressed by 

 neighbouring ones (fig. 4). The whole process of exit and 

 rounding off only occupies a few seconds, and in a well-grown 

 mass of Achlya dozens of zoosporangia may be emptying their 

 amoeboid contents at the same time ; in such cases, also, the 

 presence of this phenomenon can be detected with a hand-glass, 

 the heads of globules being quite distinct in a good light. 



VOL. XXIII. NEW SJ.R. T 



