418 
Freda M. Bachmann 
nuclear fusions in eacli cell or a degeneration of some of the nuclei. Baur 
concludes that apothecial development in Solorim saccata is a purely 
vegetative process. He gives but four figures, three of wliich are magni- 
fied only 150 diameters and serve only to show the relation of tlie asco- 
gones to the other tissues of the thallus. This reduction in the number 
of nuclei in the cells of the ascogone, if it is the result of fusion, is like 
that wliich lias been described by Fraser, Blackman, Welsford and 
Cuttixg in the ascogones of various ascomycetes. 
It may be questioned too whether the male cell has not been over- 
looked in some other supposedly apogamous ascomycetes. Wlien the 
oogone is a large cell eontaining several or many nuclei it seems reasonable 
to expect that the antheridium would also be rather large and would 
contain a number of nuclei as in Pyronema. But conditions in the lichens 
sliow that we may have a large multinucleate oogone fusing with a very 
small uninucleate antheridium (spermatium). The ascogone is indeed 
septate and the cells are uninucleate when first formed, but my results 
as well as tliose of Baur (3) and Darbishire (25) sliow that after the 
trichogyne has fused with a spermatium the cross walls of the ascogone 
as well as tliose of the trichogyne are perforated so that what is really 
a single multinucleate female cell results. Since this condition exists 
in the lichens, it seems probable that it may be found in other ascomy- 
cetes and that we may perhaps find very small antlieridial cells borne 
in unexpected places wliich serve to fertilize the larger female cell. It 
would seem espec-ially wortli wliile to investigate certain pyrenomycetes 
in wliich there is a coiled ascogone but no trichogyne growing toward 
the surface of the stroma in wliich the perithecium later develops. 
In a number of discomycetes, a fusion of oogonial nuclei in the oogo- 
nium or even of vegetative nuclei in the cells of the hypothecium has 
been described as replacing the former sexual fusions of male and female 
nuclei, this “reduced” form of fertilization being correlated with the 
disappearance or rudimentary form of the male cell. The results of the 
study of tliese forms have not been confirmed, and a reinvestigation 
confirming the fusion of nuclei would be of interest. Claussex, in liis 
recent paper on Pyronema (20) as well as in a preliminary paper (19), 
insists that there is but one fusion — that in the aseus. According to 
liis observations, there is only a pairing of the male and female nuclei 
in the oogonium, this pairing persisting in the aseogenous hypliae and 
followed by a nuclear fusion in the aseus. He finds the nuclei paired 
in the aseogenous hypliae of a considerable number of ascomycetes. In 
an earlier paper (18) he reported a fusion of nuclei in the oogonium of 
