29 1907 
/ 
The Ohio -JSjituralist, 
PUBLISHED BY 
The Biological Club of the Ohio State University. 
Volume Vii. JANUARY, 1907. No. 3. 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
Schaffner —Synapsis and Synizesis. . 
Smith— Weather and Crop Yield. 
McCi.eery— Stellate Hairs and IVltate Seales of Ohio Plants.. 
Mark— Color of Ohio Flowers. 
G'ondit —Winter Key to the Ohio Species of Euonymus. 
Detmers— Additions to the Ohio Flora for 1905-6. 
Ci.aassf.n— An Interesting Boulder of Cuyahoga County. 
Metcalf —Meeting of the Biological Club. 
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SYNAPSIS AND SYNIZESIS * 
John H. Schaffner. 
The term, synapsis, has, in recent years, gained wide cur¬ 
rency among cytologists as a designation for various real and 
hypothetical processes supposed to take place in the early stages 
of the reduction division. At the present time cytological liter¬ 
ature abounds with contradictory accounts of various cell 
activities supposed to be normal, until one is not only amused 
but utterly confused. In order to give the word, “synapsis”, a 
more definite meaning, McClungf has proposed the following 
definitions which it might be well for plant cytologists to consider. 
“By synapsis I mean the fusion of simple chromosomes into mul¬ 
tiple ones, usually of a bivalent value, according to the idea of 
Moore, who proposed the term. I would suggest that in order 
to avoid the lamentable confusion that has resulted from the 
misuse of this designation that a new descriptive word be applied 
to the contraction of the nucleus in which the chromatin is 
found massed at one side of the vesicle, without regard to whether 
it is a normal phenomenon or not. To carry this idea I shall 
call this stage the “synizesis of the chromatin.” “Synizesis’—- 
the unilateral or central contraction of the chromatin in the nu¬ 
cleus during the prophase of the first spermatocyte. A term pro¬ 
posed to avoid the misuse of the word ‘synapsis”. 
Evidently this is a move in the right direction but the defi¬ 
nition of synizesis as given above must be extended to include 
* Contributions from the Botanical Laboratory of the Ohio State 
University XXVIII. 
fMcCtUNG, C. E. The Chromosome Complex of Orthopteran Sper¬ 
matocytes. Biol. Bull. 9:304^340, 1905. 
