12 Prof. F. Schmitz on the 
whether these granules, which are already present within 
the trichogyne in the fertilizably mature carpogonium, are 
given off by the cell-nucleus of the carpogonium ; but it seems 
not improbable that they really originate from the chromatine 
corpuscles of that cell-nucleus. The described process of 
fecundation would then have to be explained as follows :— 
that in the female cell, the carpogonium, the separation of the 
directive body (¢. e. a portion of protoplasm with the separated 
useless portions of the cell-nucleus) does not take place until 
after the union of the male cell with the female cell, and the 
fusion of the male cell-nucleus with the nucleus of the female 
cell. I have no hesitation* in fact about interpreting the 
processes described in this manner f. 
Fecundation is effected in the manner just described in all 
the Floridez hitherto exactly investigated by me, however 
different the form of the trichogyne may be in the individual 
cases. Everywhere this trichogyne, after fecundation had 
taken place, was divided off as a non-nucleated cell from the 
fecundated ovicell by the closure of the short neck of the tri- 
chogyne, and abandoned to destruction. The fecundated ovi- 
cell, however, then immediately commenced a very active new 
growth. 
nV: 
In this recommencing growth the fertilized ovicell by no 
means separates from its previous tissue-connexions (as in 
the oogonia of the green Alg or the archegonia of the Arche- 
goniata), but rather remains afterwards as before in unaltered 
connexion with the neighbouring hypogynous cell and retains 
the old cell-membrane of the carpogonium as its own cell- 
membrane, extending and strengthening it as required. Nay, 
* In most instances, certainly, in plants (as in animals), the directive 
corpuscle is separated before the fecundation of the female cell (see Stras- 
burger, ‘ Befruchtung und Zelltheilung,’ pp. 79, 80), as, for example, 
among the Algze in Utdogonium, Coleochete, and Vaucheria (in the last- 
named alga the directive corpuscle contains numerous small fragments of 
nucleus which have been separated off from the numerous cell-nuclei of 
the young oogonium). But an expulsion of the directive corpuscle 
only after fecundation has taken place cannot be regarded as at all incon- 
ceivable if we consider that in the expulsion of the directive body only an 
evidently useless part of the cell-nucleus with some protoplasm is sepa- 
rated and thrown off from the female cell, but that such a rejection of 
the separated part of the cell-nucleus may just as well take place before 
as after the conjugation of the two sexual cells. 
+ The portion of the female cell destined to be expelled as a directive 
body was consequently employed before its separation as an extended 
trichogyne to intercept the spermatium, and thus to facilitate the access 
of the male cell-nucleus to the nucleus of the female cell. 
