No. 525] SEXUAL REPRODUCTION IN FUNGI 535 



in the Plasmodium is as simple as the older students be- 

 lieved. 



As directly suggestive of what may be expected in the 

 slime moulds, we have the well-established fact of the 

 fusing of multinucleated gametes and the subsequent 

 pairing of all or approximately all their nuclei. Leger 

 and others have seen that the gametes of Sporodinia and 

 other zygomycetes are multinucleated, but tbe accounts 

 of the subsequent processes in the zygospore can not be 

 accepted as well founded and no one yet lias been able to 

 trace the history of these minute nuclear granules. 



Stevens, however, has established the entrance of many 

 male nuclei and their subsequent pairing with the numer- 

 ous nuclei of the eggs of Cystopus bliti and portulaca 

 and unpublished observations made in my own labora- 

 tory have confirmed his results for C. bliti. I have also 

 found such multiple fusions of about 200 nuclear pairs in 

 the large oogonia of Pyronema. Claussen in a prelimi- 

 nary paper, while confirming the existence of the fusion 

 of multinucleated gametes and subsequent pairing of the 



1 >aii s is not completed till they reach the ascus. 



The large size of the nuclei in the ascogenous hypha? 



to confirm my own conclusion that the fusion is already 

 completed at this stage. These multinucleated gametes 

 prove convincingly that our conception of the egg and 

 male cell must be extended to include multinucleated as 

 well as uninucleated types. The cell at the moment of 

 sexual union may be multinucleated as well as in its ordi- 

 nary vegetative stages in the hyphae, etc. That the 

 nuclei fuse in pairs and not in larger numbers is further 

 convincing evidence that they are the real bearers of the 

 idioplasm and that the constancy of the chromosome num- 

 ber must be maintained by the ordinary type of doubling 

 and subsequent reduction. 



With the demonstration of the existence of coenocytic 

 gametes the nature of the coenocyte itself becomes still 



