392 M. Miiller on the Development of Chara. 
acute (compare § 2), which evidently arises from their having 
been inserted in the intercellular passages between the nucleus 
and the spore-sac. In fig. 3 the ripe fruit, the internal membrane 
of the spore-sac cannot be any longer recognised. From what 
has been stated the simple deduction arises, that the fruit is the 
metamorphosed bud of a branch or shoot. Even as regards its 
function zt is nothing more than a bud, which differs from the ter- 
minal bud of the stem merely in combining at the same time one 
character of the stem, 2. e. the cortical layer. Hence the nucleus 
is nothing more than the perfect analogue of the central utricle 
or of the metamorphosed stem itself. The sporal sac is the perfect 
analogue of the cortical layer of the stem. The contents of the 
nucleus agree perfectly with those of the internodial cells of Ni- 
tella. The fruit of Chara differs from these buds only in its com- 
pound structure. Whilst the buds of the stem and branches were 
developed longitudinally, the buds destined to form the fruit re- 
mained at the grade of buds and concentrated their formative 
powers in themselves. Finally, no impregnation takes place. This 
deduction is evidently a consequence of the above; however it 
can do no harm to mention it again here in ztalics. Thus all arti- 
ficial investigations on the so-called anthers are referred to a se- 
parate province, and their explanation becomes still more obscure. 
The five terminal cells, like the other parts of the sporal sac, have 
to defend the young nucleus from injury ; they therefore grow to- 
gether over it and perfectly inclose it. The sporal membrane has 
to fulfill the same office as soon as the spores are deprived of their 
coating, the spore-sac, in order to prevent their development into 
new plants. 
After the above remarks had been written, I found in Kiitzig’s 
* Phycologia,’ p. 80, a similar comparison of the individual organs 
of the fruit. I add them here for comparison with my own: “ The 
true fruit of the Chare is nothing more than a branch, the evyo- 
lution of which takes place in width instead of in length; the 
five cells which crown its apex are the verticil of branches*. The 
internal utricle has become transformed into the coats of the seed ; 
the external tubes, which form the cortical layer in the stem, form 
the external coat of the seed+; the angular cell-contents{ be- 
* From what has been stated this cannot be true, because branches are 
never formed from the cortical layer; we rather have a repetition and a con- 
firmation of the development of new cortical cells in the older ones beauti- 
fully repeated in the cortical layer of the stem. Kiitzing regards this cor- 
tical layer as the elongation downwards of the cells of the branches. Hence 
the five terminal cells are new cortical cells. 
+ Older authors also believed this, as Meyen, Phys. 3 Bd. p. 395, where 
a similar morphological interpretation of the fruit of the Chare is antici- 
pated. I hope to have rendered the above extended interpretation useless 
by direct observations. 
t From what has been stated this is incorrect. 
