1897 | CURRENT LITERATURE 387 
gametophyte), and the term vegetative to those methods which produce the 
same phase again. 
Furthermore, a classification which brings together seeds and spores, as 
the proposed scheme does under the term Kezme, will be as prolific of mis- 
conception as their frequent comparison has ever been. 
We become early suspicious of the book when we find the author postulat- 
ing a species as an entity. How can anyone who has studied plants write 
such a sentence as this: ‘Nun aber ist der Natur nur an der Erhaltung der 
Species gelegen und die Individuen dienen nur um die Idee der Species in der 
Welt der Erscheinungen zu reprasentiren!” Much confusion of ideas appears 
in the frequent comparisons drawn between the gametophytes of the lower 
plants and the sporophytes of the higher ; even the “flowers” of mosses and 
the flowers of seed plants are compared! Among other curiosities we find 
definition of an individual: “.... ein KG6rper, der sich nicht theilen lasst 
und zwar so, dass die Theilung unmittelbar zwei oder mehrere neue vollstan- 
dige Kérper ergibt.”. How would Mébius apply this to such a plant as 
Caulerpa? Or to almost any thallophyte for that matter? 
The impression that the book leaves is that the author has endeavored to 
assimilate modern ideas of morphology without complete success; that these 
ideas have opened out to him visions of possible coordination of facts which he 
has not yet thought through to their logical outcome; and that he has allowed 
obsolete views of the relations of the flowering plants to the lower ones to dis- 
tort his newer conceptions. Among the latter there are some of value, but 
they are not new nor are they presented with sufficient clearness to make the 
book one of any real importance.—C. R. B. 
NOTES: FOR STUDENTS. 
KLEBAHN has continued his studies on zygotes with the investigation of 
the auxospore formation in a diatom, Rhopalodia gibba O. Miiller.? In this 
Species the process involves an undoubted sexual act in the copulation of 
gametes of separate origins. The mother cells of the gametes are very com- 
monly of unequal size. They become attached to each other side by side, and 
the nucleus of each divides first into two and then into four daughter nuclei, 
of which two remain small. Each mother cell then divides by constriction: 
transversely j in such a way that the daughter cells each contain two nuclei, 
we ies the other small. These daughter cells are the gametes, and they 
fuse in pairs, one gamete ost = fasing pair hee derived from each of the 
, two sictliess cells. The disappeared during fusion. 
The so formed zygotes then grow out at tight angles to the long axes of the 
ae mane, cells and form auxospores. The large nuclei fuse quite late in 
oe 7“ Beitrage z ur Kenntniss der Ae e 1 Rhopalodia aoa ) 
oe 0. >. Miller.” Jahrb. fii Bot. 2g: Heft 
