1 66 Trow . — Observations on the Biology and 
explained. The greatest objection to this view — and it is a 
fatal one so far as concerns my plant — is that the number 
of granules in a single section may be as large as the number 
of nuclei originally present in the whole oogonium. 
Hartog himself had his doubts concerning the process, as 
the following quotations prove : — ‘ Whether any of the nuclei 
disappear and dissolve into the protoplasm, as sometimes 
stated, it is, of course, impossible to tell ; but I do not think 
so, though the idea had repeatedly crossed my own mind ’ ; 
and, ‘the size of the individual nuclein-masses when they 
occur in numbers at these late stages is enormously reduced.’ 
The evidence all appears to tell in favour of the digestion 
of the supernumerary nuclei. It is, however, possible that 
fusions of these degenerate nuclei take place during digestion, 
and that before dissolution the chromosomes make themselves 
evident. It is worthy of note that Blackman (’ 98 ) appears 
to have seen similar figures in the degenerating nuclei of the 
tapetal cells of Pinus silvestris . 
So far we have confined our attention to the textual state- 
ments of Hartog, but a careful examination of the figures 
in his paper raises doubts as to the suitability of the methods 
selected by him for the elucidation of such difficult problems 
in histology. Figs. 21 and 22, Plate XXVIII for example, 
represent two oospores of Achlya , one binucleate, and the 
other uninucleate. In each case the peripheral part of the 
oospore is occupied by dense protoplasm, the central portion 
appears in the form of a big vacuole, the nucleus or nuclei 
being suspended in the middle by fine strands of protoplasm. 
In sections of eggs of Achlya the central part is always the 
densest. Such differences as these are readily traced to the 
differences in the methods. The central vacuole figured by 
Hartog I have never seen in any oospore. It would be of 
interest for some one to test the validity of this explanation by 
actual observation, and such a research would be of value 
from another point of view, for the figures suggest that fertili- 
zation takes place in the species under consideration. The 
name of the species is not mentioned, but it could scarcely be 
