42 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
cells and its morphological characters are not very complex. 
Among the ferns, Athyrium felix-foemina varieties clarissima 
and unco-giomeratum and Scolopendrium vulgare var. crispum 
Drummondas are reported to have a gametophyte with the dip¬ 
loid number. With few exceptions these gametophytes have 
normal form. 
It seems to be fairly well established that a gametophyte can 
be normal in all morphological details and have the double 
chromosome number, and that a sporophyte can be quite as 
normal and have the reduced chromosome number. Under 
these conditions, the view held by Strasburger that a gameto¬ 
phyte with the double number of chromosomes must be regarded 
as sporophytic tissue, is no longer tenable. To call the large 
plant of Aspidium falcatum with its stem and roots, and its 
fronds bearing numerous spore sacs, a gametophyte because it 
has the haploid number of chromosomes, involves the neglect 
of too many important and conspicuous characters both physio¬ 
logical and morphological. 
We can, in my opinion, no longer maintain that the chromo¬ 
some number as such, determines the morphological characters 
of the gametophyte and sporophyte We are forced to the con¬ 
clusion that the morphological characters may be in certain 
cases independent of the chromosome number. This view is 
accepted by Farmer and Digby, Winkler and others. 
In Marsilia Drummondi as noted above, the same chromo¬ 
some number appears in the gametophyte and the somatic cells 
of the sporophyte and again in the majority of the reduction 
division figures in the spore sac. Strasburger also found that 
there were fewer than sixteen spore mother cells in a spore 
sac at the time of reduction. Correlated with this condition, 
some of these spore mother cells were found to be larger than 
others and to contain a larger amount of chromatin. It seems 
to me possible from these facts that a fusion of the spore mother 
cells in Marsilia Drummondi similar to that which I have 
found in Aspidium falcatum may occur. In full accord with 
this is Strasburger’s statement: “Im allgemeinen konnte man 
darauf rechnen, diploiden Makrosporen in einem Sporocarp 
um so haufiger gu begegnen, je geringer die Zahl der Sporen- 
