442 BOTANICAL GAZETTE | JUNE 
Miss Sargent® has recently studied the division of the 
reduction nucleus of L.Martagon, but was unable to detect any 
transverse division of the chromosome, although some facts 
observed by her point that way. She has much to say in regard 
to synapsis, but I am fully convinced that many of the appear- 
ances she describes were due to poor treatment of the material. 
In fact, I regard the so-called stage of synapsis as simply a 
product of poor preparation. Innone of my better preparations 
have I found such an appearance, in fact it was so rare in the 
stages where it is reported to occur that I should have missed it 
altogether had I not made a careful search for its appearance, 
aithough I had a large number of my own preparations and had 
the privilege of looking over a large number put up by others in 
the laboratory. In the stage when the contraction usually 
occurs the chromatin band is quite free within the nuclear mem- 
brane, since it is at this time twisting and orienting itself to 
form the twelve chromatin loops. Everything therefore is 
favorable for an artificial contraction. When the contraction 
does take place it is often exactly in the middle of the nuclear 
area, and sometimes it occurs in such a manner that the large 
nucleolus is left entirely free in the nuclear area away from the 
mass of chromatin. Miss Sargent’s explanation, therefore, that 
the chromatin contracts around the nucleolus in order to keep 
this “‘washy ” looking body from escaping beyond the confines 
_of the chromatin because of its supposed dissolution at this 
period, I venture to regard as erroneous. In various other 
plants I have seen contractions of this sort, but always in very 
poor preparations, from which it would not be wise to draw 
conclusions, and I believe that I am safe in saying that the 
nucleolus is much more often free in the nuclear area than 
caught in the contracted meshes of the spirem. 
Although a transverse division of the chromosome, or a true 
reducing division, is here established for the macrospore of | i 
Philadelphicum, the writer does not wish to be understood as 
—§ The formation of the sexual ccesnte in Lilium oe 3s Oogenesis. Ann. 
- Bot. ro: 445-477. a 
