624 
Note. 
nents as concerned in bringing about this union. The ‘ Telosynaptists ', on the other 
hand, regard this early longitudinal fission as a reality, and as indicating precisely the 
same fission as is responsible for the bipartition of the chromosomes of a normal pre- 
meiotic or postmeiotic nuclear division. 
I endeavoured to put forward the main features of the whole position as plainly 
as I could in 1905 : 
‘ Thus the essential peculiarities of the meiotic 1 phase can be explained as 
follows : They are due to the coherence in pairs of premeiotic chromosomes and 
to the intercalation of a special form of chromosome-distribution during the 
course of what would not differ materially from an ordinary premeiotic mitosis. 
In the first of the two divisions, a distribution of entire premeiotic chromosomes 
is secured, and thus the number of these bodies is really halved. In the second 
division, the longitudinal division begun, but temporarily arrested, in the 
preceding prophase takes effect/ 
I have never receded from this, position, because it has always appeared to 
me that, in spite of the many differences in detail exhibited during meiosis in the 
various members of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, this interpretation har- 
monizes best with the observed facts, and also with what we have ascertained as the 
result of comparisons with the other mitoses in the same organisms. It has also 
materially gained in strength of late years, since improved technique has made it 
evident that in somatic mitoses the chromosomes are actually longitudinally split 
during the late telophase of the preceding division, and that in the succeeding early 
prophase each differentiating chromosome can be distinctly recognized as already con- 
sisting of two longitudinally arranged halves. This duality commonly becomes 
apparently, but only apparently, lost during the following period of rapid growth and 
change of form before the chromosome becomes arrayed, along with its fellows, 
in the equatorial plate. At this latter stage, as every one knows, the split appears, or 
rather reappears, and results in the separation of the respective pairs of daughter 
chromosomes. The proof that features precisely similar in this respect are present in 
the post?neiotic as well as in the premeiotic mitoses (first given by Dr. H. Fraser) 
effectively disposes of the suggestion that this * early fission * might represent an 
abortive ‘ pairing of homologous chromosomes ’ in the vegetative mitosis. Further- 
more, the results obtained by Miss Digby and others, showing that the ‘ early fission ’ 
at the heterotype mitosis is exactly similar to the ‘ early fission ’ of the preceding 
archesporial divisions, render it extremely improbable that a fundamentally different 
interpretation is to be placed on the two cases. 
I have tried in this brief note to point out as clearly as possible what are 
the really outstanding differences which at the present time constitute the main 
points at issue between the ‘Telosynaptists' and the * Parasynaptists inasmuch 
as they have been greatly obscured by the rather unfortunate names under which 
the divergent views are now so commonly classified. 
J. BRETLAND FARMER. 
The Royal College of Science, 
London. 
1 In the original (Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., vol. xlviii) the word was printed 1 maiotic \ 
