Harper. — Cell- Division in Sporangia and Asci. 481 
Synchitrium. 
In Synchitrium decipiens , parasitic on the hog peanut, the 
swarm-spore, after penetrating an epidermal cell, develops 
the orange-coloured sorus in the hypertrophied host-cell. 
The so-called initial cell contains a single nucleus until it 
has reached practically its full development. It is then a 
mass of protoplasm visible to the naked eye (Fig. 1), and 
its nucleus has a diameter several times as great as that 
of the nuclei of the adjacent cells of the host-plant. This 
nucleus now divides with great rapidity till some hundreds 
of much smaller daughter nuclei have been produced, which 
are still, however, much larger than the nuclei of most Fungi. 
These daughter nuclei lie irregularly distributed in the initial 
cell which has thus passed from the single nucleated to the 
multinucleated condition. It is a question whether this 
process is to be regarded as a part of reproduction rather 
than the formation of a multinucleated vegetative thallus. 
Since nuclear division does not begin until the initial cell 
has reached nearly its full size, I am inclined to regard the 
division as the beginning of spore-formation and the multi- 
nucleated cell as a sporangium, the uninucleated cell being 
the typical vegetative body of the Synchitrium plant. 
Cleavage of the protoplasm of the sporangium now begins. 
This does not take place by repeated bipartitions nor by 
simultaneous precipitation of cell-walls about each nucleus. 
The process is rather analogous to that in the dividing 
protoplasm of the germinal disk of the chick, or still more 
nearly like that in those insect eggs where a series of nuclear 
divisions precedes protoplasmic segmentation h The cleavage 
is progressive from the surface of the initial cell inwards, and 
divides the mass into successively smaller portions- (Fig. 1). 
The actual division of the protoplasm is accomplished by 
furrows formed on the surface, and growing deeper and deeper 
in a more or less exactly radial direction. These grooves are 
in reality so narrow as to appear as plates, which grow wider 
1 Hertwig, Die Zelle und die Gewebe, p. 187. 
