DIVISION OF THE FECUNDATED EGG CELL. 69 
In the case of the spermatophytes also some recent investigators 
are claiming that the male germs which pass over into the egg cell 
are true cells and not simply nuclei. The discovery of the spermato- 
zoids of Ginkgo, Cycas, and Zama, and the demonstration of the 
action of these enormous spermatozoids in fecundation, has had much 
to do in clearing up our ideas of fecundation, as it was in Zama and 
Cycas, where for the first time it was positively shown in plants 
that an entire male cell entered the egg and the cytoplasm fused with 
the cytoplasm of the egg cell, while the nucleus traveled on and fused 
with the egg nucleus. 
At the time of fecundation in Zama, before the formation of the 
primary spindle has begun, so far as can be told, a very peculiar con- 
dition of the cytoplasm is observed throughout the enormous egg cell. 
The entire kinoplasm of the cell seems to collect in little comet-like 
figures here and there throughout the cell, presenting a most remark- 
able appearance (fig. 69). This condition is observed in sections stained 
by both the Flemming and the Haidenhein methods. Sections showing 
this polarized condition of the kinoplasm were exhibited at the meet- 
ing of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at 
Toronto, Canada, in 1897, and excited interesting comments. The 
kinoplasmic rays here seem to run together at one point, but there 
is no differentiated body occupying this point upon which they are 
focused. There seems to be no regular direction in which the rays 
extend. They are here and there and all over, throughout the egg 
cell, without any regularity. They can not come from the broken- 
down ciliferous membrane, as it still remains perfectly intact at the 
apex of the egg cell. They can not be fragments of the spindle 
resulting from the division of the canal cell, for they are never 
observed previous to fecundation. Chamberlain (21, p. 277, figs. 8 
and 32) illustrates cytoplasmic comet-like figures in the egg cell of 
Pinus larico much like those which the writer has found in Zama, 
but he thinks them to be broken-up portions of the spindle formed in 
the cutting off of the ventral canal cell. This the writer thinks is cer- 
tainly not their origin in Zama. Their function also remains in 
doubt, but it would seem probable that they have some important 
function in the formation of the first segmentation spindle. 
DIVISION OF THE FECUNDATED EGG CELL. 
In establishing the complete history and nature of the blepharoplast 
it is of special interest to determine whether it has any important 
function in the division of the fecundated egg cell. If it is a centro- 
some, as claimed by some writers, does it function as a centrosome in 
the segmentation of the egg? It seems to have been established that 
in many animals the spermatozoid brings in the centrosome which 
forms the amphiaster for the first division, but this has not yet been 
proved in the case of any plant. That the blepharoplast or the cilia- 
