The endospore is thick and composed of several layers, colourless, and covered with warts, which correspond and fit into those of the epispore. The contents of the zygospore are a coarsely granular protoplasm, in which float large oleaginous drops. While the zygospore is increasing in size, the suspender of the smaller copulative cell becomes a rounded and stipitate utricle, often divided at the base by a septum, and which attains almost to the size of the zygospore. The suspender of the larger copulative cell preserves its primitive form and becomes scarcely any larger. It is rare that there is not a considerable difference of size between the two conjugated cells and the suspenders.[E] Similar conjugation with like results also takes place in _Syzygites megalocarpus_. In this species the germination of the zygospores has been observed. If, after a certain time of repose, these bodies are placed on a moist substratum, they emit a germ-like tube, which, without originating a proper mycelium, develops at the expense of the nutritive material stored in the zygospore into a carpophore or fruit bearer, which is many times dichotomously branched, bearing terminal sporangia characteristic of the species. It has already been remarked by us that the _Saprolegnei_ are claimed by some authors as Algæ, whilst we are more disposed to regard them as closely allied to the Mucors, and as they exhibit in themselves strong evidence in support of the existence of sexual reproduction, we cannot forbear giving a summary of what has been observed by De Bary and others in this very interesting and singular group of plants, to which M. Cornu has recently dedicated an exhaustive monograph.[F] In _Saprolegnia monoica_, and others, the female organs consist of oogonia--that is to say, of cells which are at first globose and rich in plastic matter, which most generally terminate short branches of the mycelium, and which are rarely seen in an interstitial position. The constitutive membrane of the adult oogonia is reabsorbed in a great many points, and is there pierced with rounded holes. At the same time the plasma is divided into a larger or smaller number of distinct portions, which are rounded into little spheres, and separate from the walls of the conceptacle in order to group themselves at the centre, where they float in a watery fluid. These gonospheres are then smooth and bare, with no membrane on their surface of the nature of cellulose. [Illustration: FIG. 97.--Conjugation in _Achlya racemosa_. (Cornu.)]