﻿1903I CURRENT LITERATURE ' 77 



Juel/5 while trav^eling in Tunis, secured a specimen of the curious para- 

 site Cynomorzu7n coccineum, and succeeded in keeping it alive until he had 

 secured material for the entire life-history except the seed and seedlings, and 

 even this gap was filled later from material collected in Trapani. He had 

 thought that a careful study might reveal some such condition as that 

 described by Treub for Balanophora, but fertilization and the formation of 

 the embryo take place in the usual manner, as had already been shown by 

 Pirotta and Longo. The behavior of the megaspore mother-cell is peculiar. 

 The two cells resulting from the first division of the megaspore mother-cell 

 are very unequal, the one nearest the micropyle being considerably smaller. 

 This smaller cell divides longitudinally and the larger one transversely, thus 

 giving rise to four megasporeSj of which the one nearest the chalaza develops 

 at the expense of the other three. The peculiar arrangement of the four 

 megaspores and their inequality in size are habitual, having been noted in 

 twenty cases. Artificial pollination showed that fertilization takes place four 

 days after pollination ; sixteen days after pollination embryos of various sizes 

 were found. The antipodals do not divide, as described by Pirotta and 

 Longo, but may be distinguished as three undivided cells even after the 

 endosperm has become abundant. In the ripe seed the embryo is a small 

 spherical mass of cells with i\o suspensor and no differentiation into body 



regions. — Charles J. Chamberlain. 



^sjuEL, H. O,, Zur" Entwickelungsgeschichte des Semens von Cynomorium. 

 Beih. Bot. Centralbl. 13 : 194-202. fi^s,^. 1902. 



