Laboulbenia chaetophora and L . Gyrinidarum. 347 
the three mitoses. Unfortunately— and here is the crux in this theory, the 
one direct proof that would establish beyond cavil the correctness of Harper’s 
assumption of two nuclear fusions — he could find no indications of a second 
meiosis. The claim that there is such is merely the theoretical deducing of 
one assumption from another. Fraser (’08) and her co-workers, it is true, 
state that they have detected in certain forms indications of the theoretical 
second reduction, but Guilliermond (’ll) has examined some of the same 
species and has seen nothing of them. Guilliermond, Dangeard, Maire, 
Brooks, the author, Claussen,as also Harper, have found no second reduction 
in the many forms examined by them, and the search has been by no means 
perfunctory. 
Further, it may be added that though the generality of the occurrence 
of eight spores in the ascus is striking it is not exceptionless, and is no more 
remarkable and perhaps no more significant than the regularity with which 
the Laboulbeniales produce two-celled spores, or the Fucaceae eight-nucleated 
oogonia, or the Angiosperms eight-nucleated embryo-sacs. 
While Harper’s interpretations have received very general acceptance, 
there have been dissenters. Most notable among them is Dangeard, who 
has maintained on the strength of his own researches that the primary 
sexual organs, except in Eremascns and Dipodascus , are no longer functional, 
that they have been abandoned, so to speak, and that the sexual phenomena 
have been transferred to the ascus, in which the only nuclear fusion in the 
life cycle takes place. The gamete nuclei, he affirms, must then come from 
vegetative cells of the thallus, presumably from the peripheral cells of the 
ascogenous hyphae, and may travel together for one or more generations, 
dividing conjointly before fusing in the ascus. It seems strange that 
Dangeard has never observed a fusion of antheridium and oogonium in some 
of the forms studied by 'him, for example, Sphaerotheca , Erysiphe , and 
Pyronema , in view of the joint testimony of several seasoned botanists that 
such exist. Having failed to do so, however, he has unequivocally challenged 
the reliability of the observations of Harper, Claussen, et al ., in respect to 
their assertion that they have observed these phenomena. 
Maire (’05) has followed Dangeard’s lead, and deems from what he has 
observed in Galactinia (cp. also Guilliermond (’05) on Acetabidct leucomelas ) 
that conjugate nuclei, or in his own terminology synkarions, are characteristic 
of the Ascomycetes, and hence that there is a more evident parallelism or 
homology throughout the Eumycetes than has been hitherto recognized. 
Finally, Claussen (’07), after examining Pyronema , has burned his 
bridges behind him, and in a paper that bids fair to become a classic has 
championed an hypothesis similar to Maire’s and Dangeard’s, except that he 
locates the origin of the gamete nuclei that finally fuse in the ascus in the 
gametangia. He has observed migrations of nuclei from the antheridium 
into the oogonium and a pairing up of the nuclei in the latter, followed by 
