8 BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN MEMOIRS 
longer than broad, presenting the appearance of rods, deeply stained, 
lying in a peripheral zone of the cytoplasm. 
The material on which this cytological study was made was not 
as well fixed as it might have been. The peridium of the fruit bodies 
is very dense and tough, not permitting the rapid penetration of the 
fixing fluids. Then in the later stages of zygote formation the thick 
cartilaginous wall of the resting zygote very likely offers great resist- 
ance to the penetration of the fluids. An attempt will be made 
to collect more material during the present season, when the fruit 
bodies will be cut open before placing them in the fixing solutions, 
and also it is hoped that younger stages of development may be 
secured. 
Up to the present time no one has succeeded in germinating the 
resting zygotes of any species of Endogone. Link (1809), Fischer 
(1897, p. 121, 124) and Bucholtz (1912) have described sporulation 
in the “resting spores’’ (azygotes) of Endogone pisiformis, a partheno- 
genetic species. In this species the wall of the resting spore is only 
slightly thickened. According to Fischer and Bucholtz the content 
of the resting spore is gradually divided into angular areas which 
round up and form a number of large elliptical spores inside the wall 
of the resting spore (or ? sporangium). Their study was not made on 
living material, but on specimens preserved for several years. There 
was no intersporal substance or epiplasm. 
I have made several attempts to germinate the resting zygotes of 
Endogone sphagnophila, but thus far without success. The first 
attempts were made in December, 1916, with material kept on sphag- 
num under cover of a bell jar in the shade on the north side of a 
building. The cultures were made by tearing out mats of mycelium 
with the resting zygotes in a thin layer of water on glass slides which 
were kept in moist chambers. The cultures were examined day by 
day for a period of two weeks. These cultures were then allowed to 
remain out of doors on a window ledge with a southern exposure until 
the middle of January, 1917, when they were brought inside and again 
examined daily for a period of a week. During the latter part of 
March and early in April, 1917, fresh cultures were started from the 
same source, 7. e., from fruit bodies kept on sphagnum out of doors, 
where they were subject to freezing and thaw. Thus far (Apr. 17, 
1917) there has been no evidence of germination, although the great 
majority of the zygotes appear to be alive and in good condition. 
A few of the zygotes, however, appear to be dead. In many of these 
the content is divided into irregular bodies. Others are filled with 
elliptical or globose bodies, in some instances with intersporal sub- 
stance. These bodies, some of them, at least appear to be spores, 
