72 Davis . — The Fertilization of Bat rack osper mum. 
trichogyne to be always a prolongation of a female cell, 
specialized to receive the antherozoid. This conception is 
well illustrated in the case of Nemalion , for there the tricho- 
gyne is a mere extension of the cytoplasm from the carpo- 
gonium, and of course has no independence of character as 
a cell. The female nucleus is supposed by all these writers 
to lie in the swollen portion of the cell below the trichogyne, 
which is now pretty generally spoken of as the carpogonium. 
The general tendency of thought is then to consider the 
carpogonium as homologous with the oogonium of certain 
chlorophyllaceous Algae, and the resemblance between the 
typical carpogonium with its trichogyne and the peculiar 
oogonium of members of the Coleochaetaceae has often been 
noticed. However well such a conception may apply in 
many genera of the Florideae, the writer does not think 
that Batrachospermum can be considered in such a light. Its 
trichogyne, with a nucleus and a body morphologically 
a chromatophore. is not a mere prolongation of a cell. 
It may be mentioned that Schmitz 1 states, with an 
accompanying figure of B. moniliforme , that he has observed 
fragments of a substance, staining as chromatin reacts, in the 
trichogyne after it has been cut off from the carpogonium. 
He regarded these nuclear fragments as being evidence of 
a reduction-process, whereby some of the chromatin of the 
female cell is discarded. It is of interest to confirm his 
observations upon Batrachospermum , although the writer 
cannot put the same interpretation upon the facts ; for the 
nuclear fragments are probably derived from the nucleus 
of the trichogyne. 
The writer, while using the term fertilization throughout 
this paper, has realized that the process which he has described 
would not be called a sexual process by most biologists. 
From the observations here recorded it does not appear that 
the nucleus of the antherozoid, or any portion of it, ever 
reaches the carpogonium. Even when the nucleus left the 
1 Schmitz, 1 . c., p. 13. 
