In a communication to the Russian Scientific Congress, which met at Kieff last summer, Professor S. Nawaschin summed up the brilliant results of his recent work on the fertilized embryo sac of Lilium Martagon and Fritillaria tenella (August 30, 1898).

The report of this article, published in the ‘Botanisches Centralblatt5 of January 4, 1899,  led Professor L4on Guignard to contribute a short account of his unpublished research on similar stages in the life history of some Lilium species (X. martgon, L. pyrenaicim and others) to the Academic des Sciences de Paris (April 4, 1899).

The results thus obtained independently by two distinguished Botanists are in perfect agreement and present the highest theoretical theory interest. They find that both male generative nuclei upon emerging of the pollen tube are elongated in shape, and that each is more or less twisted on its own axis. The nuclei, in fact, appear to have been
killed by the fixer in the act of spontaneous movement within the

embryo sac. M. Guignard compares this movement with that of a non-ciliated anterozoid. * The “vermiform” shape can be traced in the male nucleus for some time after it has attached to the nucleus of the ovum.f

The most surprising discovery, however, is that the second generation nucleus unites with the superior polar nucleus of the embryo sac, and which then both merge with the lower polar core. So the definitive nucleus of the embryo sac, which later gives rise to the repeated division of the nuclei of the endosperm, is formed by the coalescence of three nuclei of very different origin. One is the brother nucleus of the male.

element in the fertilized ovum; another, the sister nucleus of the feminine element; and the third has all the characters of a vegetative nucleus. Professors Nawaschin and Guignard fully agree with these facts. M. Guignard adds that occasionally the polar nuclei have coalesced before the arrival of the “anterozoid”, and gives a series of figures in which the triple fusion is perfectly clear.

I am fortunate to have some preparations from the fertilized embryo sac of Lilium Martgon, which, as far as they go, fully confirm the results of Professors Nawaschin and Guignard. The material was fixed in absolute alcohol for investigations that were It didn’t even start but I cut off some sections of the hand right away