132 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [AUGUST 
ing the female nucleus enfolds it. Its starch is uniformly dis- 
tributed around the fusion nucleus and passes with it to the base 
of the archegonia to be included in the cytoplasm segregated 
off asthe proembryo. The larger part of the cytoplasm of the 
egg takes no direct part in the formation of the embryo, but is 
digested and used by the latter in its growth. 
The first division occurs after the fusion nucleus has reached 
the base of the archegonium. 
Eight free nuclei are formed, which arrange themselves in 
two tiers, the upper of which generally contains six, the lower 
two. Cell walls are now formed, but the upper side of the upper 
tier is left open. This open tier now divides by walls at right 
angles to the long axis of the archegonium into the rosette of 
free nuclei above and the suspensors below. The two cells of 
the lower tier divide at the same time by walls parallel to the 
long axis of the archegonium, and thus four cells instead of two 
are produced in one plane. 
The suspensors as they elongate may.or may not separate, 
and thus one or several embryos may be formed from one arche- 
gonium. 
It is thought that the family Taxodieae as now composed is 
an artificial one; that Taxodium itself must be removed to the 
Cupresseae, leaving Sequoia and perhaps other as yet imperfectly 
known genera of the present family Taxodieae to be included in 
a family of their own under another name. 
NOTE. 
Since the completion of this work in May, 1901, several papers 
have appeared bearing more or less closely on certain points here 
taken up. Miss Ferguson’s two papers on fertilization, etc., in 
Pinus (Annals of Botany, 1go1), and Arnoldi’s Beitrége zur 
Morph. de Gymn. V. (Bull. Soc. Imp. Nat. Moscow, No. 4, 1900), 
dealing with fertilization, embryo formation, etc., in the 
“Sequoiaceen,” are important, and would have been referred to 
frequently i in the text had they appeared before this work was 
handed in. Miss Ferguson confirms Blackman’s (’98) state- 
ment that the sperm cells of Pinus are furnished with a cyto- 
age 
