50 
The remarkable way in which this review of abnormal embryo- 
sacs seems to establish our views, made us doubt Miss Pacz’s 
description and look for another explanation of the data. 
We will give first some facts, not in agreement with Miss 
Pacr’s view, then our own suggestion about the life history of the 
female gamethophyte of Cypripedium, followed by our arguments 
taken from Pacer. Of course we cannot give more than a sug- 
gestion, a definite decision being only possible by reinvestigation 
of the whole material. 
The objections against Pace are: 
1’. The statement about there being no more than two divisions 
is based on the entirely negative argument that no more divisions 
have been seen, which is recognised by Miss Pace herself in 
saying: “No evidence of another division was found, although 
at least 300 slides with hundreds of ovules upon each were 
examined for this peculiar stage. When the sac is ready for 
fertilization, four nuclei are present, so that if other nuclei are 
formed they are very ephemeral‘. On her Plate XXIV fig. 24 
she however reproduces an unfertilised, jive-nucleate sac! 
2. The direction of the spindle in the first, and (according to 
Pack) only division of the micropylar nucleus is |, while the ordi- 
nary direction of the spindle in the division, which gives rise 
to the two synergids, is —. Moreover one of the figures (Pact, 
Plate XXIV fig. 26) shows the two synergids still united by 
fibres in — direction! 
5°. The statement about the entering of a synergid in triple 
fusion is very poorly illustrated. As a matter of fact though 
“double fertilization was observed in hundreds of instances“ 
the removal of the synergid-nucleus to the embryosac-nucleus 
has not been seen even once. The sacs show either, when 
still unfertilized, both synergids in their place at the top, 
or after fertilization, one synergid destroyed and two nuclei 
below the egg. It seems to us that Miss Pace not knowing how 
to trace the origin of that second nucleus, by lack of other 
nuclei came to the conclusion that it could be nothing else but 
a synergid-nucleus. This is a mere hypothesis however, and 
cannot be meant to be more than that; she herself with ample 
