48 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
neck canal cell is the mother cell of the neck canal row. The 
spindle for the division into two canal cells, as shown in fig. 25, 
has been found four times in the material studied. From this 
point on the cells of the canal row divide in almost any order. The 
evidence for this shown by the spindles in figs. 27, 28, 30, 31, and 
34. By this intercalary growth a row of canal cells, usually 8 
or g in number, is formed (figs. 38, 40). 
The division of the primary ventral cell occurs late. Fig. 38 
shows 8 canal cells and the ventral cell undivided; while we were 
fortunate enough to find a spindle when there were 7 canal cells 
_ (fig. 39). The ventral canal nucleus produced by this division is 
peculiar, being only a trifle smaller than the egg, and is remarkable 
in that it is regularly persistent and behaves for a time just as 
does the egg. Not long after the division into ventral canal cell 
and egg, the canal row begins to disintegrate (this process having 
a variable beginning, through quite often acropetal), but not so 
the ventral canal cell. Its cytoplasm begins to condense about the 
nucleus (the same process occurring about the egg), and soon we 
have in a mature archegonium the appearance of two eggs separated 
by a wall (fig. 41). Later the cytoplasm about each of these two 
nuclei becomes markedly condensed and rounded off and may be 
easily observed in the living material. Still later the wall between 
the two cells breaks down and the nuclei, each as the center of a 
ball of cytoplasm, come to lie near together in the venter of the 
archegonium. Usually just before fertilization the ventral canal 
nucleus disintegrates. 
THE GROWTH OF THE ARCHEGONIUM 
We have already shown that the growth of the canal row is 
intercalary. The same is true of the growth of the wall cells. 
Fig. 26 gives valuable evidence on this point. It is not an excep- 
tional case, but was found a number of times. The evidence goes 
to show that about the stage of two canal cells there comes a sudden 
vigorous growth of the archegonium through intercalary divisions, 
this process frequently involving one or two rows of cells simul- 
taneously. This sometimes results in’ one side of the archegonium 
becoming longer than the other, tilting the cover, as is shown in 
