84 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters* 
strands tend to take the orange of the triple stain, but here 
and there are portions staining blue. In some cases, larger, 
blue-staining granules are found at intervals along the strands. 
On the outer side of the cell, in the position finally to be occu¬ 
pied by the starch mass, a relatively large, elongated, clear 
region is frequently to be found. At times it is of regular 
outline, lying about midway between nucleus and outer cell 
wall* its short diameter equal to about one-quarter the dis¬ 
tance between the nucleus and cell wall. At other times this 
region is more irregular in outline and may branch somewhat. 
In any case, it is bounded by comparatively heavy, blue-stain- 
ing elements of the cytoplasm which frequently show larger 
granules lying close against their inner side; the upper left 
corner of Figure 2 shows part of such a region. The appear¬ 
ance of this region in the cytoplasm suggests the polar struc¬ 
tures of Isoetes, especially as they are found in the early pro¬ 
phases and practically free from starch. Unfortunately, I am 
at present unable to say anything further concerning the sig¬ 
nificance or subsequent history of this appearance in the cyto¬ 
plasm of the spore mother-cells of Marsilia. The nucleus at 
this time shows the chromatin finely divided and aggregated 
in clusters of varying shapes; frequently long, irregular 
threads of chromatin run out from these clusters. Numerous 
nucleoles are present. 
When the starch grains first appear, they are usually more 
or less scattered in the cell and rather widely separated from 
each other; frequently it seems they tend to lie near the nu¬ 
cleus. Soon, however, this scattered arrangement gives place 
to a more definite one; the starch grains are found at a 
specific region of the cell, being located almost invariably be¬ 
tween the nucleus and the wall of the cell facing towards the 
outside of the spore sac. Frequently the starch grains lie in 
a quite distinctly bounded group, often of a cylindrical shape, 
one end in contact with the nucleus and the other reaching al¬ 
most to the cell wall (Fig. 3). While most of the starch 
grains at this stage lie in this region, it is to be noted that 
usually some of them lie outside of it. In the cell repre¬ 
sented in Figure 3, in a higher plane than that at which the 
