Nov., 1912.] 
The Reduction Division in Fuchsia. 
7 
Two varieties of the Fuchsia commonly grown in greenhouses 
were used. Both were varieties of Fuchsia speciosa (Hort.), of 
rather small size—one variety having red and the other white 
sepals. The species is commonly supposed to be a hybrid. 
Fuchsia speciosa was obtained from the greenhouse in connection 
with the Botany building of the Ohio State University at Columbus 
The buds which showed the reduction stages were quite small, being 
about 3-5 mm. in length. They were killed in Schaffner’s weaker 
chrom-acetic solution. Material was left in the killing fluid for 
24 hours and then thoroughly washed and run up to 70 per cent 
alcohol where it was left for several days. Then 85, 95 and 100 
per cent alcohols were added in turn and chloroform and from that 
the buds were slowly taken into pure parafin and imbedded. 
Sections were 10-15 mic. thick. Delafield’s Haemotoxylin was 
tried with poor success. The best stain was a combination of 
Safranin and Iron Haemotoxylin. The slides were transferred 
from 25 per cent alcohol to Safranin and left for four hours. They 
were then washed off in 25 per cent alcohol and put into water 
and then transferred to iron alum. Slides were kept in iron alum 
for four hours and then washed for a while in water, after which 
which they were left over night in Haemotoxylin. Next day the 
slides were bleached in iron alum, and in some cases acid alcohol, 
and were mounted in balsam. 
The tapetal layer is rather slow in developing but by the 
time the sporocytes began to be differentiated it can easliy be dis¬ 
tinguished as a limiting layer of the sporogenous tissue. The 
sporogenous tissue remains intact during all the early stages of 
the reduction process and it is only while the chromosomes 
are being formed that the sporocytes become separated from each 
other and from the tapetal wall. In cross section the stamens 
show the usual four microsporangia and each cavity usually 
contains from five to eight sporocytes. As the stamen grows 
older the number of sporocytes, that show in cross section de¬ 
creases until four is the more usual number. This may be due to 
the rapid elongation of the anther at the time when the sporo¬ 
cytes are separating. 
The nucleus in the early stages is rather small and is made up 
of a reticulum, containing dark staining masses (Fig. 1). As the 
nucleus enlarges these lumps become much more prominent and 
definite and may be regarded as protochromosomes (Figs. 2, 3, 4). 
In no case was it possible to make a positive count of these masses 
since some of them had apparently begun to disintegrate while 
others were just forming. As the lumps disappear the material 
seems to go toward the formation of small chromatin granules 
which are scattered along a delicate thread (Figs. 4, 5, 6). This 
thread could be traced for some distance in a number of the cells. 
Often there are two nucleoli present in one nucleus but in most 
