NOTES. 
OH' FERTILISATION, AND THE SEGMENTATION OF 
THE SPOKE IN FUCUS \ By J. Bretland Farmer, M.A., Pro- 
fessor of Botany at the Royal College of Science, and J. Ll. Williams, 
Marshall Scholar at the Royal College of Science, London. — The 
object of the present communication is to give an account of the chief 
results of an investigation into the processes connected with the 
formation and fertilisation of the oospheres and the germination of 
the spore in Ascophyllum nodosum, Fucus vesiculosus, and Fucus platy- 
carpus. The more obvious details of development have been especially 
studied by Thuret, and later by Oltmanns. But neither of these 
writers paid any special attention to the behaviour of* the cell-nuclei, 
nor did they succeed in observing the actual process of fertilisation. 
Behrens has communicated an account (Ber. d. Deutschen Bot. 
Gesel., Bd. IV) of some researches made by himself on the fertilisation 
of the oospheres, but we are unable to accept his conclusions for 
reasons shortly to be recounted. 
The material for these investigations was obtained in London from 
Bangor, Plymouth, and Jersey, but it was compared with other 
material collected, and fixed at the seaside at Bangor, Weymouth, and 
Criccieth. Furthermore, all the growing apices and conceptacles for 
sectioning were collected by one of us directly at the three last-named 
places. Some samples were gathered between the tides, and fixed at 
once, others were first kept for a time in salt water ; the best results, 
however, were obtained from plants collected in a boat about two 
or three hours after the tide had reached the plant, and also from 
other plants taken a short time before they were left exposed by the 
ebb tide. 
In order to study the stages of fertilisation and germination, male 
3 Paper read before the Royal Society, June 18, i8y6. 
