E. MAESHALLI. — EEPRODUCTIVE ELEMENTS. 181 



substance is apparently homogeneous and is about as deeply 

 stained by borax-cannine as the chromatin of ordinary nuclei. 

 Their exact relation to one another at the central ends is 

 difficult to make out. Xo trace of parls comparable to the tail 

 of spermatozoa can bo discerned at the outer ends. Xor have I 

 been able to discover developmental stages of the single bodies 

 or of the groups. Particularly the not uniform appearance of 

 the rod-like bodies, and the indefinite number of them in each 

 group, make me, after all, decidedly disinclined to explain them 

 as the heads of developing spermatozoa. More probably I have 

 had before me simply colonies of a certain low organism, per- 

 haps parasitic in nature. 



In E. aspergillum, F. E. Schulze declares to have observed 

 both young and malurc sperm- masses. It is to be regretted that 

 neither of them was specially described. The cellular ' sperm- 

 mass,' shown in his pi. IV, fig. 6 (Chall. -Report), is evidently 

 meant for a young stage, and as before indicated (p. 171), I 

 have scarcely a doubt that such young ' sperm-masses ' of Schulze 

 belong under what I have calleJ archtBOcyte-congeries. Never- 

 theless, Schulze may be perfectly right in his interpretation ; 

 for, there is no ground to deny the possibility that some, but 

 not all, of the single-standing archoeocytes represent, or are 

 destined to differentiate into, the spermatogonia, which, after 

 repeated division, should finally give rise to masses of rij^e 

 spermatozoa. But, before this can be accepted as the fact, 

 further evidence has yet to be adduced. 



As to the female elements I have likewise been able to 

 derive no definite knowledge from my own observations. I can 

 do no better than to describe, for what they are worth, two cases 



