Abstract
IN Prof. Allen Thomson's Inaugural Address to the British Association, I find the following sentence, referring to the simplest form of sexual reproduction among cryptogams, known as conjugation:—“In more ordinary cases, as in Spirogyra, where the embryo is formed in one of the two cells, it seems to be indifferent in which of them it is formed.” If my own experience may be taken as trustworthy and adequate, there is one fact in connection with this phenomenon which would seem to show that it may not be altogether indifferent, and that the differentiation of male and female elements may be carried back even one step further than is stated by this distinguished biologist. When two filaments—which we may call A and B—are conjugating, then, as far as my observation has gone, the direction of conjugation is uniformly the same, i.e., either the contents of every cell in A pass over into the adjacent cell of B, or the reverse; we never find the contents of some of the cells of A passing over into B, and the contents of some of the cells of B passing over into A. If this is so, and if we call the filament in which the zygospores are ultimately produced A, then it is clear that we may fairly call A the female and B the male filament; and it would appear certain that there must be some hitherto undetected difference between them. My own observations in this respect relate almost exclusively to Spirogyra, and I shall be very glad to know if they are confirmed, or otherwise, by those of more experienced algologists.
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BENNETT, A. Reproduction by Conjugation. Nature 16, 340 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016340a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016340a0
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