62 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
of fusion and within the egg. Few botanists would have been satisfied 
I think with Trow’s evidence on the latter point in his paper of 1899. I 
regarded his views as “‘unproven and improbable” in the face of the mass 
of observations upon which most botanists have generally agreed that the 
Saprolegniales were apogamous. I still consider myself quite justified 
in taking this attitude, which I tried to present with due consideration to 
Trow as possibly being mistaken in his interpretation of some very difficult 
conditions. He seems to have taken my expressions as controversial, 
which I tried hard to guard against, and has certainly answered them in 
that spirit. One result at least has been an account of fertilization in 
Achlya DeBaryana which in detail of description and clearness of figures 
is quite a different sort of contribution from that of 1899. 
Achlya DeBaryana furnished Trow the most complete series of stages 
of fertilization. In his-jfigs. 23-26 the antheridial filaments are united 
with the eggs by broad strands of protoplasm, and nuclei lie in some cases 
almost exactly at the points of fusion, either as though they had just entered 
the egg or were about to do so (fig. 23). The figures (especially 24 
and 25) even show that peculiar structure of the protoplasm which indicates 
a flow from the antheridial filaments into the eggs, conditions which have 
been illustrated many times in accounts of fertilization among the Perono- 
sporales. These statements give us what we have a right to expect of any 
account of fertilization, and especially when the technical conditions are 
so complicated as in the Saprolegniales. They seem to me fundamental 
to the present problem, and the establishment of the ratio of nuclei in 
oosphere and oospore as 1:2:1 merely a corollary to the main proposition. 
If Trow will exhibit his preparation showing these protoplasmic fusions 
of antheridial filaments with eggs at scientific meetings in Great Britain 
or elsewhere he is not likely to have any difficulty in establishing his con- 
tention. 
account of a second mitosis in the cogonium and the origin of the aster- 
like structures which I discovered in Saprolegnia and considered coeno- 
centra. During the second mitosis, according to TRow, two centrosomes — 
with radiations appear at the poles of the spindle in anaphase, structures 
which were not present in the first mitosis. Some of these increase rapidly — 
__ in size and become the centers of the egg origins, each one being accom- 
_ panied by the nucleus that lay beside it, after anaphase of the second mitosis. 
Relatively few of the nuclei in the oogonium pass through this secon 
_ mitosis, the remainder degenerating, and Trow believes that some of the 
” —— nuclei of this division with their asters also break down. The 
Of greater interest to me than the evidence of fertilization is TROW’S_ 
