38 MARCUS M. HARTOG. 
mation of these cells and their position in the mature embryo- 
sac ready for fertilisation ; the dotted vertical lines indicate 
successive stages. The symmetrical relation of the eight 
cells formed is in no way exaggerated in the figure. 
Of the eight cells so formed not one is capable of ulterior 
independent development; though it appears from Stras- 
biirger’s figures,! and those of other authors, that enough 
interval is left between the mitoses for the nuclei each time 
to resume a resting state. Hence it cannot be the extreme 
rapidity of the mitoses that determines the reproductive in- 
capacity of these cells. The fate of these eight cells is very 
different. 
(1) The Apical Pair or Synergids, aptly termed Gehiil- 
finnen (handmaids) by Strasbiirger, are utilised as the channel 
for the transmission of the male pronucleus, sometimes 
undergoing a complete degradation into a gelatinous form of 
cellulose. 
(2) The Upper Subapical Cell is the Oosphere, 
destined on receipt of the male pronucleus to evolve into the 
Embryo. 
(3) The Lower Subapical and Upper Subbasal Cells 
conjugate to form what we may term the Endosperm-cell; 
this undergoes repeated divisions, appropriating at each more 
and more of the parietal cytoplasm of the embryo-sac, till at 
length the brood-cells constitute a continuous cellular layer, 
the Endosperm, in which the embryo lies, and destined to 
destruction as food for the embryo, either during the matura- 
tion of the seed, or later on in the process of germination. 
For some time no cell-walls separate the brood-cells, which 
thus constitute an apocytium, lining the embryo-sac, and en- 
closing a gigantic vacuole which persists in the Coco-nut. When 
cell-walls divide up this apocytium, their inner tangential walls 
form a continuous lamina, within which remains a layer of 
cytoplasm surrounding the central vesicle,? just like that of 
the gametangium of Botrydium or Acetabularia. Here 
1 «Befruchtung und Zelltheilung,’ &c. 
? Berthold, op. cit., p. 218, 
