480 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JUNE 
The author uses largely the terminology of spermatogenesis in animals to 
describe the well known stages in spore development. The desirability of 
this innovation is perhaps questionable. We have come to use, to be sure, a 
common nomenclature for many stages in the vegetative mitosis of both plant 
and animal cells, but until the significance of the processes in the sporange 
and the pears and testis are better understood it is perhaps best not to insist 
too much on the value of apparent analogies. Spore development and reduc- 
tion of the chromatin are undoubtedly associated with alternation of genera- 
tions in plants, and until it is settled whether a similar relation exists in ani- 
mals a separate terminology is desirable. The author expresses much 
surprise that “such obvious structures as tetrads should have been hitherto 
overlooked in the plant reproductive cells.” This is, however, merely a ques- 
tion of name, since he does not dispute the accuracy of the figures for the 
lilies as given by Farmer, Strasburger, and others. The term is certainly not 
very applicable to the figures in lilies, where the contraction of the chromo- 
somes in the prophases does not go so far as to reduce them to almost spheri- 
calshape as in the ferns. This fact probably makes the lilies more favorable 
for the study of reduction than are the ferns. The existence of “tetrads”’ can 
hardly be regarded as settling the question of a reduction division in Weis- 
mann's sense. Mottier, in the latest paper on the lilies, admits that two 
interpretations of the figures are possible, and that the occurrence of a longi- 
tudinal splitting of the chromosomes in the second division is not — 
excluded.—R. A. H. 
THOSE INTERESTED in the cians of the fungi will find record of a 
large number of experiments by Alfred Lendner upon some Mucorini and 
conidial forms of Ascomycetes in Annales des Sciences Naturelles (Bot.) VII 
3: I—64. 1897. His investigations were addressed to the question of the 
combined influences 
: of light and the substratum upon the development of 
the fungi which were selected haphazard. The results have proved very 
variable not only in the two groups, but even in the same species, so that ne 
— conclusions have been reached.—C. R. B. 
TITTMANN has studied he formation and regeneration of periderm, 
mis, wax-cove} sand le in varioiis plants." His oo woe ee 
he elicct of increased p pressure upon the formation. of the es was a 
: ippeane of 7 surrounding young twigs of various a 
ior pee cork development, ee om 
