g6 
Correspondence. 
REFORMS IN CELL-NOMENCLATURE. 
Sir, - 
Is it possible that other Students have felt the need fora 
new term in Botanical Nomenclature to express the distinction 
between a cell with the reduced number of chromosomes in its 
nucleus, and a cell with the unreduced number? The Zoologist is 
not in the same case here as the Botanist, for in animals there is 
not the intercalation of repeated divisions between the reducing 
division and the formation of the gamete. To the Zoologist the term 
“ somatic cell ” has a well-determined signification, and though not 
so obviously applicable in the Vegetable Kingdom owing, among other 
reasons, to the gametophyte sometimes producing what has the 
appearance of a “ soma,” there is no absolute necessity to discard 
it in vegetable cytology. Granted then that the Botanist adopts 
the expression “ somatic cell ” for a cell with an unreduced number 
of chromosomes, we require a term for such cells as contain a nucleus 
with the reduced number of chromosomes. We have further the 
unfortunate habit of calling the first initiators of the gametophyte 
tissue “ asexual spores,” a term which tends to obscure their 
nature and prevent the full meaning of such work as that of 
Farmer on Apogamy in Ferns, and of V. H. Blackman on the 
Passage of Nuclei in Uredineae from being as obvious as it should 
be. I would suggest that all cells, containing nuclei with the 
reduced number of chromosomes, be called haplocytes, while the 
somatic cells with the full number might be called diplocytes. Thus 
“ asexual spores,” all cells of the gametophyte, including the 
gametes, come under the heading of haplocytes and this becomes a 
simple common denomination for such cells. We might call the 
spores “ haplospores,” or simply refer to them as haplocytic 
spores. Dr. Lotsy 1 has suggested the term “ gones ” as a common 
denomination of both “ asexual spores ” and gametes. The 
adoption of some common term seems requisite but, as pointed out 
above, it seems better to bring the non-specialized gametophyte 
cells into the same category and for this the term “ gone ” does not 
seem suitable. I suggest, therefore, the terms “ haplocyte ” and 
“diplocyte” as general descriptive terms. 
There is another anomaly in Botanical Nomenclature, to which 
perhaps you will allow me to refer, as we find it almost universally 
in the best of text-books. I refer to the use of the expression 
“ spermatozoid-mother-cell ” for the cell which, by differenciation 
(not division), gives rise to the sperm. The expression sperm-cell, 
which is rarely used, seems preferable, as the former involves the 
use of the term mother-cell in two senses. In the majority of 
cases it is used for the cell which by division gives rise to two or 
four daughter-cells, but there is no division involved in the so-called 
spermatozoid-mother-cell. 
Or is the latter an anachronism of the same character as 
“ special mother-cell ” for the remains of the pollen-mother-cell 
wall, which surrounded the young pollen grains ? This latter 
anachronism has happily for some time gone out of use, and it 
would seem desirable that the expression sperm-mother-cell should 
also be discontinued. M. BENSON. 
Royal Holloway College, 
February , 1905. 
1 J. P. Lotsy, Die Wcndung der Dyaden, etc. Flora, 1904. Footnote, p. 69. 
