May, 1905.] The Nature of the Reduction Division. 
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for saying, as some do, that the gametophyte generation begins 
with the sporocyte than it would be to insist that the first stage 
of the sporophyte consists of the egg and sperm before conjuga- 
tion. The gametophyte is, of course, the sexual generation and 
the sporophyte the nonsexual generation, both from the mor- 
phological and physiological points of view. In the higher plants 
the gametophytes are ver}" much reduced and some have insisted 
in retaining the old misapplied sex terms for the sporophyte. 
But this leads merely to a confuison of terms and ideas. To 
compare pollination, the growth of the pollentube, and the other 
processes connected with the development of the gametophytes 
of higher plants with fertilization, as it exists in the sexual gen- 
erations of plants and animals, is only comparing things that are 
not even analogous and giving such diverse meanings to sex 
terms that they lose their real significance entirely. 
Fig. 2. Diagram showing principal stages in the life cycle of the higher 
plants. 
In the higher animals we appear to have a condition similar 
to that in Fucus, a “ 2x” gamete-producing organism in which 
reduction takes place before the formation of gametes. The egg 
with its polar bodies represents four original eggs comparable to 
the four spermatozoids developed from the spermatocyte. It is 
interesting to note that in some of the Brown Algae part of the 
eight eggs which are produced after reduction also degenerate. 
Furthermore, the eggs of the Fucaceae are discharged while in all 
