1900 ] HL CELE PLATE IN HIGHER PLANTS 8: 
confirmed by Farmer and Williams.” These investigators found 
that there isan accumulation of material, which they think is some 
form of a carbohydrate, in the neutral zone between the daughter 
nuclei of the future oospheres. There is, however, no trace of a 
preliminary cell plate. While spindle fibers were seen reaching 
from the poles to the equatorial region of the cell, no evidence 
was found that they take part formatively in the building of the 
division wall. 
In an early paper Strasburger had pointed out the differ- 
ence between the method of division of the cell body of ani- 
mal cells and that of the higher plants, by stating that in the 
former the connecting spindle fibers take no part in the division 
of the cell body, but that the division is accomplished by the 
constriction of the plasma membrane; whereas in the latter 
these fibers are increased in number and take part in the division 
of the cell by forming a cell plate. This view Carnoy” attempted 
to overthrow in his work on the testicular cells of some arthro- 
pods, in which he claimed to have found a cell plate tormed of 
two parts, a cytoplasmic part formed by thickenings appearing 
on the junctures of the cytoplasmic network, and a spindle part 
formed by swellings on the connecting spindle fibers. I have 
not been able to find that this work has been confirmed by sub- 
sequent investigators. The spindle portion (plague fusoriale) of 
Carnoy is undoubtedly the midbody (Zwischenkérper) subse- 
quently described by Flemming*® and others as arising from 
granules in the equatorial region of the spindle, but not always 
as swellings of the spindle fibers. Notwithstanding the fact 
that it takes no part in the division of the cell body, Flemming 
was inclined to consider it the homologue of the cell plate in the 
pa plants. The midbody has received a great deal of atten- 
tom the zoologists, and various views have been held as to 
its significance and fate. The literature on the subject has been 
26 Pe 
re Contributions to our knowledge of the Fucacez. Philos. Trans. of the Roy. 
a 190 : 623. 
27 : 
La cytodiérése chez les arthopodes. La Cellule rx : 375. 
Neue Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Zelle. Arch. fiir mikr. Anat. 38: 690. 
