1900] ACHROMATIC SPINDLE OF OSMUNDA Bia 5. 
kinoplasm has the advantage of more general acceptance, it will 
be employed here to designate not only this differentiated layer 
of cytoplasm but also the spindle forming material in all its 
modifications. 
As the kinoplasm increases in quantity, it begins to assume 
asomewhat definite outline and texture. It becomes distinctly 
granular, and the granules are often disposed in short rows which 
tun nearly concentric with the periphery of the nucleus, but are 
intertangled more or less confusedly (figs. 2, 4). In cells which 
have been fixed in chromo-acetic acid a more distinct fibrous 
appearance is presented. In some cases the fibers appear to 
form a loose mat; in others they are so related as to resemble a 
delicate meshwork with the meshes flattened towards the nucleus. 
Though the appearance is such as to suggest that the fibers and 
meshes are only a modification of the cytoplasmic reticulum, 
the writer was unable to trace the steps of such a transformation. 
The kinoplasmic material, both in its earliest form and in that 
assumed after cell division before its final re-transformation into 
reticulate cytoplasm, could not be distinguished as either retic- 
ular or fibrillar, but was very indefinitely granular. 
The reader will not fail to discover the similarity of these 
“onditions to those described by Osterhout (11), as the prepara- 
tory Steps of spindle formation in the spore mother cells of 
Equisetum, although in Equisetum no layer of granular matter 
Was observed. But the similarity stops here. The spindle in 
munda does not pass through a multipolar stage, nor is there 
at any time a zone of radiating fibers about the nucleus, such as 
were seen by Osterhout in Equisetum, and by Belajeff (1), Mot- 
- (9), Lawson (8), and others in the pollen mother cells of 
“atlous seed plants. Tripolar spindles, though occasionally met 
mith (fig. 7 0), were of so rare occurrence that their beginning or 
fate could not be traced, and it is certain they are not normal 
‘ages in the development of the spindle. 
. The changes in the outline of the kinoplasmic mass ar 
aad and easy to follow. When it has become distinctly § 
i structure its fibers, all the time increasing in quantity at 
e very 
fibril- 
