370 Cc. H. MARTIN. 
to vary considerably ; all that can be said at present is 
that,-as far as my experience goes, it usually occurs 
between stages I and K.” 
(2) Page 342. “In my preparations of Dendro- 
cometes I have at least three cases in which the mega- 
nuclei actually touch, but a considerable number in 
which they approach one another very closely in the 
conjugation processes. That the junction is not merely 
casual contact, but actual organic connection, is proved 
by the preparation which is represented in PI. 18, fig. 11. 
Here there is no sign of any boundary between the two 
nuclei, and the chromatin granules are fixed in such a 
manner as to suggest very forcibly that during life they 
were flowing from one side to another.” 
As at this stage of conjugation the macronuclei are rapidly 
degenerating, Hickson, in his attempt to show that this con- 
tact of the macronuclei is of fundamental importance in 
conjugation, puts forward the theory that “there is no 
inconsistency in the view that after the disappearance of the 
old meganucleus its nucleoplasm is still living in a modified 
form diffused through the cytoplasm.” 
The latter stages in the degeneration of the macronucleus 
in a conjugating acinetarian are almost precisely similar to 
the stages figured by Schaudinn in the digestion of the 
nucleus of a T'richospherium sieboldi which has been 
devoured by one of its congeners, and to the stages which I 
hope to describe in the digestion of the nucleus of Stentor 
by Tokophrya, and I believe that it is quite as justifiable 
to speak of the nucleoplasm still living in a modified form 
diffused through the cytoplasm in the one case as in the other. 
I feel inclined, until further evidence is adduced, to regard 
the appearance figured by Hickson as abnormal, the forces 
which tend to elongate the macronuclei in the degenerating 
stages having carried the process too far, and breaking 
through the partition dividing the two conjugants led to the 
apparent macronuclear conjugation. In both the conjugants 
