88 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 551. 



Englisli words is found in the final e, which 

 always denotes the long sound of the pre- 

 ceding vowel, as in tone, hite, hate, etc. It is 

 true that recent writers on botany have fre- 

 quently attempted to simplify the spelling of 

 technical terms to the detriment of phonetic 

 principles, and so we have such forms as 

 mestom, plerom, hadrom, etc., which must be 

 admitted to our dictionaries as variants of the 

 infinitely preferable mestome, plerome, ha- 

 drome, still employed by careful writers. The 

 fact that there are two Greek words kXuv and 

 K^dvog (the latter giving us the English ad- 

 jective clonic) merely emphasizes the impor- 

 tance of properly indicating the long o in 

 English derivatives of kIuv. I therefore sug- 

 gest clone (plural clones) as the correct form 

 of the word to be adopted in dictionaries, 

 lexicons and general writings. It is to be 

 hoped that the ' shackles of philology ' to 

 which Mr. Webber so feelingly refers will not 

 prevent him from accepting this suggestion in 

 the friendly spirit in which it is offered. 



Charles Louis Pollard. 

 Springfield, Mass. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 



PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE ARAUCARINE^. 



In my paper on the megaspore-membrane 

 ■of the Gymnosperms^ a footnote refers to 

 the occurrence of supernumerary nuclei in 

 the pollen-tube of Agathis. Eecently I 

 have found that the number of nuclei in 

 the pollen-tube of Araucaria may be even 

 ;greater than that observed in the former 

 genus, being over thirty in number in one 

 instance at least. The supernumerary nuclei 

 are placed fore and aft of the generative 

 group in a parietal stratum of protoplasm not 

 unlike that of the megaspore. Again the be- 

 havior of the pollen-tube in Araucaria is pe- 

 culiar. The pollen-grains do not fall into 

 the micropyle but are found at the distal end 

 of the ligule more or less entangled in its 

 serrated edge. Erom this point the tubes 

 pass in grooves on the surface of the ligule or 



^ ' The Megaspore-Membrane of the Gymno- 

 sperms,' by R. B. Thomson. University of Toronto 

 Studies, Biological Series, No. 4, pp. 85-146, Pis. 

 I.-V. 1905. 



the scale, a distance of an inch or more, to 

 the micropyle, which they enter and after 

 penetrating the long beak of the nucellus 

 arrive at the archegonia. This method of 

 pollination and growth of the pollen-tube is 

 uniqiie among the Gypmosperms so far as is 

 known and its bearing on the problems of 

 fertilization important — notably on what may 

 for convenience be termed the ' free-growth ' 

 theory of chalazogamy. 



The double nature of the integument is 

 very apparent in young ovules of Agathis, as 

 Strasburger^ long ago observed. The micro- 

 pyle in some cases at least extends almost to 

 the base of the nucellus on its upper surface, 

 though usually not so far on the lower, in the 

 form of V-shaped slits. 



The archegonia are peculiar in structure 

 arrangement and development. Their study 

 is throwing new light on the character and 

 relationship of these organs in the subgroups 

 of the Conifers. 



The vascular supply to the ovules worked 

 out by series of celloidin sections is found to 

 be different from the descriptions already 

 given of it and promises very material aid in 

 settling the vexed question of the primitive 

 or specialized nature of the subgroup under 

 consideration. 



These features and other chiefly anatomical 

 ones, added to the peculiarities presented by 

 the megaspore-membrane and the tapetum, 

 as described in the paper to which reference 

 has been made above, place the Araucarinese 

 in a very isolated position among the sub- 

 groups of the Coniferse. The forthcoming 

 monograph, it is hoped, will make this clear 

 and aid materially in the establishment of 

 the phylogenetic position of the Araucarinese. 



EoBERT Boyd Thomson. 

 Biological Department, 

 University of Toronto, 

 June 20, 1905. 



the death ( ?) OF AN AMCEBA. 



While watching some amoebae on Eebruary 



8 I observed one which was behaving in a 



singular manner. Instead of progressing in 



- Strasburger, E., ' Die Angiospermen und die 

 Gymnospermen,' p. 91, 1879. 



