Notes . 
393 
experiments, I came chiefly to rely on safranin, haematoxylin, fuchsin, 
methyl-green, gentian-violet and orange-G. On the whole, the best 
results were obtained by slow staining in haematoxylin, followed, 
after washing out the surplus stain, by further treatment with a watery 
solution of orange. Both gentian-violet and safranin, especially when 
used in conjunction with orange, gave good results. The sections thus 
prepared were mounted in glycerine, or glycerine and chloral hydrate, 
or were cleared and mounted in Canada balsam, and for double or 
triple stained preparations I much prefer the last mentioned mounting- 
medium. Extremely satisfactory results were obtained, in the case of 
the haematoxylin-orange stain, by treating the sections stained with 
haematoxylin, after careful washing, with a weak solution of lead 
acetate, and then finally, after again washing, staining with orange. 
Zinc sulphate was also tried in the same way, but was found not to 
give such good results. All the above methods led to the same 
conclusions, though with various degrees of clearness, and as my 
observations are somewhat out of accord with those commonly 
accepted, I thought it best to communicate those results which 
appeared to be of the greatest interest, reserving a detailed account 
for a future occasion. 
On examining the pollen-mother-cells at that stage of division when 
the chromosomes (which, as Guignard stated, are twelve in number) 
are aggregated in the equatorial plane, and the achromatic spindle 
is well defined in the cytoplasm, I found what I was by no means 
prepared for, namely, that in the cytoplasm there are scattered about 
a number of granules, which were not figured in the plates accom- 
panying the memoir already referred to ; and that these granules are 
coloured by those stains which differentiate the chromatic elements 
of the nucleus, and are thus very clearly defined in the cell-proto- 
plasm. They occur for the most part, though by no means entirely, 
in the region of the achromatic spindle, and the point of interest 
connected with them is this, that many of them are obviously related 
to the spindle-fibres, and mark the position of attraction-centres for 
parts of the spindle which is thus broken up and beco?nes multipolar , 
if one may use such an expression. This character is illustrated by 
the figure (Woodcut 2, B), which is intended to reproduce an actual 
camera lucida drawing. The granules which are thus related to the 
spindle-fibres are very variable in number, and are equally so in 
position ; a number of granules, however, so far as I have observed, 
