50 Farmer . — Studies in Hepaticae : 
but the process is, as it were, slowed down. At a certain 
time, and previously to any visible change in the nucleus, 
a quadripolar spindle is formed, each of the four rays pro- 
jecting into one of the four lobes of the spore-mother-cell. 
At the extremity of the rays may be seen a distinct proto- 
plasmic aggregation which represents a centrosphere, but 
a centrosome was not observed. 
Now this quadripolar spindle is transient in Aneura , for 
when the chromosomes become delimited and individualized, 
the original quadripolar spindle breaks up and is replaced by 
two independent spindles in the equators of each of which 
there may be counted eleven, or possibly twelve chromosomes. 
These are excessively small, and it is difficult, and perhaps 
not very important, to determine their absolute number. 
Then each spindle acts independently, and the chromosomes 
(which here too are in the form of short rods) become 
doubled, and nuclear division takes place as on normal 
lines. 
Aneura pinguis, of which I obtained a good supply when in 
Ceylon, also exhibits very plainly the quadripolar spindle, 
which diverges from the relatively large nucleus. In this 
plant it can be clearly seen that the nucleus, at the stages at 
which my specimens were fixed, is passing into the spirem- 
stage. I could not, owing to failure of material, obtain the 
stages of actual nuclear division in this plant, but the presence 
of such a spindle is of interest. 
In Lophocolea I have also seen nuclear division proceeding 
on the same lines as I have just described for Aneura multi- 
fida , but I have not seen as yet anything like a quadripolar 
spindle. It may however ultimately prove to be there, and 
my failure to recognize it hitherto may be due to its transient 
existence — a difficulty which I had experienced already in 
Aneura — in Lophocolea , as in Aneura , and there was the same 
difference between the reproductive and vegetative nuclei, as 
regards the shapes of the chromosomes ; i. e. in the former 
they appear as rods, in the latter as loops. 
It is obvious, from what has been said, that a serial 
