20 WIB BOTANICAL MAGAZINE. [Voi/xxi. No. 240. 



certain Rhodophyceae both carpospore and tetrespore are borne 

 in one and the same individual is not easy to explain from the 

 author's standpoint. We shall wait with great interest the 

 appearance of the full paper. K. Miyake. 



Stopes, M. C, and Fujii, K. The nutritive relations 

 of the surrounding tissues to the archegonia in Gym- 

 QOSperms. (Beih. z. Hot. Centralbl. Bd. 20, Abt. I, p. 

 1-24, with 1 pi. 1906). 

 Materials used for the studies are twenty species of Cycads 

 representing seven genera, Ginkgo biloba and four species of 

 Pinus. The authors found that the wall between the egg cell 

 and jacket cells are pitted and each pit is closed by a mem- 

 brane which is itself somewhat irregularly thickened and per- 

 forated in a way comparable to a sieve plate. The final pits 

 are also closed by a membrane and perforated only by fine 

 protoplasmic threads (Plasmodesmen). Thus any large open 

 communication as observed by Ikeno, Smith, Chamberlain and 

 others is positively denied. The delicate walls of the endosperm 

 eel Is were also found to be pitted in the same way. 



In no ease have any wandering nuclei of the jacket or endo- 

 sperm cells been observed, and even after the development of 

 the embryo has already begun, the jacket cell nuclei retain their 

 integrity. It is proved that the so-called " Hofmeisters Korper- 

 c hen " are not nuclei or of nuclear origin, and the authors 

 Bttggest that they may be nutritive or digestive vacuoles com- 

 parable in origin and function to the digestive vacuoles of 

 lower organisms, which are formed as required round the tem- 

 porarily deposited food in the e<j;g cytoplasm. 



The jacket ceHs are regarded as glandular, secreting sub- 

 stances for the digestion of the starch and protein granules stored 

 in the endosperm. The well developed jacket cells of the 

 Gymnospemtnc prothallinm are compared morphologically to 

 the A.ngk>spermic antipodals, and attention is drawn to the 

 similar timet ion performed by them and the active antipodals of 

 some A.ngiosperms. K. Miyake. 



