62 
Sarah M. Baker. 
beyond the region of paraphyses, which project a little way out of 
the ostiole, no further motion occurred. It appeared as though the 
ejection was caused by the swelling up of the adjacent paraphyses 
on being put into water, the bundles moving in the direction of 
least resistance away from the point of attachment of the paraphyses. 
Although several hundreds of sections of receptacles in various 
stages of dryness have been cut, this phenomenon has not since 
been observed. One bundle of sperms has been seen moving by 
jerks in Fucus vesiculosus, and two on different occasions in Fuchs 
• serratus, but not more. 
It was thought advisable to try the effect on the dehiscence of 
removing some of the paraphyses. The hairs were removed by 
putting the receptacle into a liquid, allowing the liquid to solidify 
(thus embedding the projecting paraphyses) and then pulling off 
the solid mass which contained the hairs. Fucus spiralis was used 
for the experiment, since in this species the paraphyses project in 
large tufts from the conceptacles. The first liquid used was 
paraffin wax. The receptacle was dipped into molten wax, then at 
once put into cold water, and the loosened shell of wax removed 
with a penknife. Some of the paraphyses which were only dragged 
partly out of the conceptacles, and were still attached to small pieces 
of wax, could be easily cutoff with a sharp knife. In order to eliminate, 
as much as possible, the error due to a different degree of ripeness in 
the receptacles, the twin receptacles formed by the dichotomy of the 
thallus were used ; one being waxed and the other being similarly 
treated, only without the waxing. It was found that the waxing was 
only efficient in removing the projecting paraphyses when the recep¬ 
tacles were comparatively dry; this introduced a difficulty, because 
the waxing had to be done after exposing the receptacles, and so 
any gametes which had collected in drops of mucilage outside the 
ostioles of the conceptacles were removed with the paraphyses. 
As far as could be judged by rough counting on the dull wax, the 
number of bundles of eggs thus removed was, as a rule, compara¬ 
tively small. In addition to this there is the possibility that small 
pieces of wax may be left in the ostioles and so prevent the 
expulsion of gametes. 
A set of exactly similar experiments was made with Fucus 
serratus (in which the paraphyses do not project from theconceptacles) 
as a check to the above. If the actual process of waxing lias 
any effect on the seaweeds, it should be shown in these experi¬ 
ments where no paraphyses are removed by it. The results were 
