﻿344 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [may 



Sometimes two or even three nuclei may lie sufficiently near 

 the coenocentrum to be saved from degeneration, and such eggs 

 are in consequence bi- or trinucleate. Binucleate eggs are not 

 uncommon, trinucleate eggs are more rare. 



As the eggs mature, the favored nucleus increases greatly in 

 size, until it is many times larger than at the period following 

 the mitosis. The other nuclei have generally completely dis- 

 organized, but sometimes traces remain as granules scattered in 

 the cytoplasm. 



Binucleate eggs in the Saprolegniales need have no relation 

 to the problem of sexuality, and Trow's conclusions are not 

 established. 



SPOROGENESIS. 



A general confirmation of the accounts of Rothert, Hartog, 

 and Humphrey. 



The uninucleate spore origins are differentiated by clefts that 

 push their way from the central vacuole of the sporangium to 

 the periphery. When the clefts reach the cell wall, the turgor 

 of the sporangium is relieved through the escape of water, and 

 the spore origins run together, but they soon draw apart and 

 round themselves off as zoospores. There seem to be no cyto- 

 plasmic centers in the sporangium comparable to the coeno- 

 centra. 



The University of Chicago. 



Note. — Mr. Barker's interesting paper '*The morphology and develop- 

 ment of the ascocarp in Monascus" (Ann. of Botany 17 : 167. 1903) came to 

 my hand at the same time as the final proof of the foregoing article. I 

 should have liked to discuss in detail a number of points which he takes up 

 in connection with the origin and relationships of the Ascomycetes, but must 

 defer the matter to some future time. There are some comments, however, 

 which seem sufficiently important to justify this note. Monascus adds 

 another form to the list of Ascomycetes whose sexual organs are coenoga- 

 metes, and in so far strengthens my view that this type of sexual organ is 

 likely to prove the primitive one for this group. I cannot agree with Barker 

 that sexual conditions such as are presented in Albugo Blitz are simple 

 enough for the lowest types of Ascomycetes, because the differentiation of 

 ooplasm and periplasm, with the accompanying coenocentrum and the 

 extreme specialization of the antheridium, all characters almost universal in 





