508 Harper . — Cell- Division in Sporangia and Asci. 
much blackened as is the case with many Discomycetes. 
I will first describe some of the stages in the nuclear divisions 
in the ascus which I had failed to find or had been less suc- 
cessful in fixing and staining in the forms of cup-fungi 
already studied. In my earlier paper, for the sake of showing 
details on a larger scale, only the nuclei and the protoplasm 
immediately adjacent to them were figured. In the present 
case I have figured in each case the entire upper part of 
the ascus (from one-half to one-third) so as to show the 
appearance of the entire spore-bearing portion as a whole. 
In the almost fully developed ascus of Lachnea there is 
a differentiation of the protoplasmic contents such as was 
described in part by De Bary and Strasburger. The lower 
two-thirds is filled by a very foamy vacuolated protoplasm 
which is convexly rounded off at its upper end against a denser 
granular plasma which fills most of the remainder of the 
ascus. The very apex of the ascus is filled by a cap of fine 
granular protoplasm, between which and the dense granular 
spore-plasma there is an oval foamy mass like that found in 
the lower portion of the ascus. Through the centre of this 
upper foamy area a vertical dense strand of protoplasm extends, 
at certain stages of development, from the under surface of 
the granular cap tapering downward to the upper surface of the 
spore-plasma. It is regularly present in the uninucleate stage 
of the fully developed ascus (Fig. 38), and again after the 
spores are fully delimited, and suggests the possibility of 
a fountain-like streaming of the protoplasm in the upper end 
of the ascus analogous to that described by Klebs 1 for the 
cells of some higher plants. 
In my figures of the late diaster stages of the first division 
in Peziza Stevensoniana I was unable to make out a system 
of polar rays. In Lachnea scutellata , however, the asters attain 
a very noticeable development in this stage (Fig. 38). The 
rays from the upper nucleus extend almost to the apex of the 
ascus, and those from the lower one stretch far down into 
1 Form und Wesen der pflanzlichen Protoplasmabewegung, Biol. Central- 
blatt, Bd. i. 
