Male Gametes in Pines and Allied Conifers. 173 
in which one species, C. drupacea}, has equal male nuclei, and 
another species, C. Fortuiiei, unequal. 
Although Coulter has described equal male cells in Pinus 
Laricio, Miss Ferguson has recorded the existence of unequal male 
nuclei in Pinus austriaca, which I find is now regarded merely as a 
variety of P. Laricio. It is scarcely likely that a variety of any one 
species would agree in this respect more closely with other species 
than it does with the species of which it is a variety. Moreover 
Strasburger in his “ Die Befruchtungsvorgange bei den Gymno- 
spermen,” says that many pines behave as does Pinus sylvestris 
and amongst them he mentions P. Laricio. It will be remembered 
that Strasburger figures unequal nuclei in the former species, 
and, therefore, it seems more than likely that he intended it to be 
understood that P. Laricio had unequal male nuclei also. Coulter 
and Chamberlain also say that two male cells are formed in Pinus 
Laricio, but Miss Ferguson says of P. Laricio, as well as of the others 
she has examined, that although two male nuclei are formed, they 
remain in the same cell. Two species of one genus, Torreya, have 
been described, one with two male cells (Coulter and Land on 
Torreya taxifolia 6 and one with two unequal male nuclei in a single 
cell (Miss Robertson’s T. californica, 15). But one would certainly 
not expect so great a difference as this in a variety, especially as 
other species agree with the variety. I do not, therefore, think 
that these observations of Coulter and Chamberlain are confirmed 
by more modern researches. Pinus sylvestris I therefore regard as 
falling into line with the other pines as they have been described by 
Miss Ferguson (8). Professor Blackman’s isolated instance of 
equal male nuclei in P. sylvestris is probably a reversion to the time 
when equal nuclei were formed. 
There can be little doubt that the body cell divided primitively 
into two equal male cells, and that the inequality of the male cells 
of such Conifers as Cephalotaxus Fortunei and Torreya taxifolia, 
and the inequality of the nuclei with the loss of the power of 
forming the two cells, as seen in the pines, Picea (Miyake 14), Abies 
(Miyake 13), &c., are recently acquired characters. Strasburger in 
1892 suggested that these inequalities of the sizes of the cells (he 
was not aware of the cases in which no division of the cytoplasm 
was made between the two male nuclei) were due to the fact that 
in those cases only one male nucleus from one pollen grain has a 
1 Lawson (11) records equal male nuclei in C. drupacea , but his 
figure 27 shows unequal nuclei. 
