: 
“es 
TERMINOLOGY OF REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS OF PLANTS. 29 
do, when he leaves the lecture-room of the zoologist, where 
he has learned that the male cell in fertilization is called 
a sperm, and enters the precincts of the botanist, to learn 
that in the nomenclature of the sister science the same 
word stands for the product of union of the male and 
female cells? This objection alone is I think sufficient 
to put this reform (?) out of court. Moreover the term 
‘“‘sperm’’ is, not as claimed by the authors, ‘‘justified by 
the universal employment in phanerogamic botany of such 
terms as ‘gymnosperm,’ ‘angiosperm,’ ‘endosperm’ and 
‘perisperm,’”’ for the simple reason that used in these 
compounds it stands for “seed,” i.e. the embryo plus 
its food-store and integuments, and not for ‘“‘all those 
bodies which are the immediate result of impregnation,”’ 
for which in the authors’ nomenclature the word “‘sperm”’ 
stands. The immediate result of impregnation is not 
“naked”? in the gymnosperms nor is the albumen within 
the ‘‘sperm”’ as the word endosperm would then signify. 
Although the endosperm is formed after fertilization in 
the angiosperm, and so might be said to be a “‘a result 
of impregnation”? though not an ‘“‘immediate”’ result, 
endosperm, as every student knows, is in the gymnosperm 
formed previous to impregnation. Iam informed also by 
Professor Rendall, that cxépzxz in Greek stands either for 
“‘seed’’ in the botanical sense or “‘semen,”’ and on equally 
good authority, so that no argument can be drawn of a 
distinctly favourable character from etymology. 
I am bound to say that I can see no reason whatever for 
the persistence with which botanists cling to the term 
“‘oosphere’’ for the female reproductive cell. As in the 
case of the word spore, if the oosphere be an ovum in the 
sense In which that word is used by the zoologist, why 
not employ the term ovum in Botany also? 
Finally, I cannot follow the authors in their limitation 
