1911] COULTER—EN DOSPERM OF ANGIOSPERMS 385 
other words, the vegetative fusion is more apt to arcana the 
normal situation than a sexual fusion. 
There is no necessary phylogeny of such a performance. It is 
more a physiological problem to discover the conditions in the 
embryo sac of angiosperms that favor miscellaneous nuclear 
fusions. 
The final conclusion seems to eo that free nuclei within the 
embryo sac, containing a variable number of chromosomes and 
reacting to one another in various ways, are in a condition to con- 
tinue division, and this division is usually carried forward to tissue 
formation. The whole history of the megaspore and its products 
justifies us in regarding this tissue, however formed, as gameto- 
phytic. 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 
Note.—Since this paper was in type, there has appeared a paper 
by CAMPBELL on the embryo sac of Pandanus,' which supplies 
another illustration of the indefiniteness of the nuclear fusions 
Within the sac. In this case there is an extraordinary development 
of antipodal tissue before fertilization, and a varying number of 
free antipodal nuclei fuse with the micropylar polar to form the 
large primary endosperm nucleus. In some cases two primary 
endosperm nuclei may be formed by these multiple fusions, and it 
would seem to make no difference in the result whether the “ second 
male nucleus” fuses with one of them or with neither of them. In 
either event, it is obviously a vegetative fusion. 
Ann. Botany 25:773-789. pls. 59, 60. figs. 2. 191T. 
