1908] BRIEFER ARTICLES 385 
Fegatella conica to the list of bryophytes already investigated, and to give 
increased weight to the opinion that the type of sexual differentiation in 
the forms so far studied is at least the predominant if not the universal 
type among the bryophytes. 
April 22, 1906, Fegatella was found by the writer abundantly fruiting 
in the large pot holes in the Gletschergarten at Lucerne. The capsules 
for the most part were not yet opened. Two days later, in the Botanical 
Laboratory at Halle, unopened sporangia were carefully dissected out, and 
after a microscopic examination to make certain that no spores from other 
sporangia had adhered to their outer surfaces, they were preserved sepa- 
tately in small sterile paper envelopes. Spores from one of these single 
sporangia were sown May ro in several Petri dishes in 0.1 per cent. Knop’s 
solution. By June 19, the germinations from the spores had grown to 
Sufficient size to be readily handled, and accordingly 128 from a single 
Petri-dish culture were transplanted to earth in regular rows in large shallow 
pots. They had reached a considerable size but were not sufficiently 
Matured to produce their sexual organs when it became necessary in the 
latter part of July to leave them in the care of the Diener of the laboratory. 
The coming November a number of the plants were shipped to the writer 
packed in parchment paper with damp sphagnum moss. Fegatella does 
hot multiply non-sexually by gemmae as does Marchantia, and there is 
Practically no danger of infection in the earth cultures from thalli of the 
Same species. Of the plants shipped, twelve survived the two weeks’ journey 
and Were sown in separate pots in the Harvard Botanic Gardens, where 
they have since been kept growing. Three of the cultures by the character 
of the sexual organs produced have shown themselves to be female and 
fight to be male. A single capsule of Fegatella, therefore, contains both 
male and female unisexual spores. The other cells of the sporophyte, 
undoubtedly, are hermaphroditic in character, although attempts to demon- 
Strate this by regenerations from the stalk or wall of the sporangia were 
fntire failures. One of the twelve pots, presumably with only the growth 
from a Single spore, showed both antheridia and archegonia, but it was not 
Possible to find that the lobes producing these different sexual organs 
Were connected. It is possible that the differentiation of sex is not 
always complete in the capsule of Fegatella, and that hermaphroditic 
Spores are in fact occasionally produced, as is the case in the mold 
Phycomyces; but it seems more likely that a fragment of a thallus of the 
T sex became accidentally mixed with the growth planted in this 
Particular pot.—A. F, BLAKESLEE, Connecticut Agricultural College, 
