168 BOTANICAL GAZETTE | SEPTEMBER 
abandoning the view held by DeBary (1884) concerning the 
relationship of these two latter groups. Zoosporangia have not 
yet been studied cytologically with the completeness they 
deserve, and it is unwise to deny the possibility of relationship 
‘between the ascus and the sporangium until both cell and cilia 
formation in the Phycomycete zoosporangium is understood. 
As the conidia in phylogeny and ontogeny stand for zoospo- 
rangia, it is clear that they represent masses of potential zoo- 
spores, and are consequently synplasts in the sense in which 
that word was used by Hanstein (1880). The vegetative coeno- 
cyte that develops from the spore is also a synplast, which in 
phylogeny (and often in ontogeny) goes back to a time when 
each nucleus governed a definite region of cytoplasm. The multi- 
nucleate condition of this vegetative body results from a retarda- 
tion of cell division, similar to that in the embryo sacs, particularly 
well illustrated in the gymnosperms, and in the eggs of insects 
(Hertwig 1892). In the latter forms the delay is not maintained 
long in ontogeny. Cell division follows soon after nuclear 
division. In the coenocytic algae there is failure to individual- 
ize during a whole generation. Existing forms show that the 
vegetative body was coenocytic long before the gamete became 
so. In Albugo, the multinucleate condition of the female sex- 
ual cell may be regarded as the result of pushing the synplast 
habit one step further in ontogeny. The sexual cells were the 
last to give up their individuality, the vegetative cells the first. 
The synplast in the Phycomycetes differs from that of most 
spermatophytes in many ways, most strikingly, however, in the 
mobility of its potential units. While it is phylogenetically 
equivalent to many cells, a compound of potential cells, in the 
sense that Hertwig (1892) uses the expression, the phycomycete 
Ssynplast, both in sexual and asexual parts, must be regarded 
as a morphological unit. The potential units have lost their 
definite limitations and so their morphological value. Discus- 
sion regarding the nature of the vegetative coenocyte may be 
found in numerous texts, as Strasburger (1880, pp. 372; and 1893): 
Zimmermann (1896, p. 10), Haberlandt (1896, pp. 12-62), 
