30 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
so. Araucaria finds again its closest resemblances among the 
Taxaceae. The habit of entering the archegonium between the 
neck cells without injuring them is an old one, dating back to 
Archegoniatae generally. The habit in the araucarians of liber- 
ating the male cells outside of the archegonium and allowing them 
to enter it under their own power of movement is doubtless more 
primitive than that prevailing among the Pinaceae, where the 
tube actually delivers the male cells inside the archegonium in 
many cases. 
The female gametophyte is very similar to that of most conifers. 
Attention has been called to the apparently peculiar method of wall 
formation in the transformation of the free-nuclear state to the 
walled prothallus. Since that was written (3b), Saxton has pub- 
lished an account of the life history of Tetraclinis articulata (18b), 
in which he shows a photograph (fig. 6 of his paper) in which three 
of the nuclei occupy a position in what is elsewhere supposed to be 
the wall of the forming alveoli. Possibly this may indicate that 
walls are formed in this plant in the same way as in Araucaria. 
The multinucleate condition of the prothallus at fertilization 
time is not peculiar to Araucaria, being now recorded in several 
other genera (Agathis, Cryptomeria, etc.). It is probably more 
widespread than the literature indicates at present. 
The late stage at which the ventral canal nucleus is cut off, and 
the lack of any trace of a wall are certainly not evidences of primi- 
tive behavior. In fact, there are very few evidences that the 
female gametophyte has lagged in its development behind conifers 
in general. That is, it seems to me, as it should be. The male 
gametophyte has retained.a lot of primitive characters, because 
they are associated with the habit of pollinating the scale. These 
influences do not affect the female gametophyte, and it has there- 
fore gone on in the course of evolution much as other conifers have 
done. 
The persistence of the male cytoplasm in the egg has now been 
recorded for a number of genera of the Araucarineae, Podocarpin- 
eae, Taxodineae, and Cupressineae, but I have seen no record of 
it among the Abietineae. The majority of these records relate to 
genera (Agathis, Phyllocladus, Podocarpus, Torreya, and Cephalo- 
