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The micro-gametes soon liberate themselves from the residual cytoplasm of the parent and swim away in search of a megagamete; each is a very slender, wavy filament, composed largely of chromatic substance.

The megagametocyte becomes a megagamete directly after a process of maturation, which consists in the expulsion of a certain amount of nuclear substance.

The microgamete in this case is the male element and equivalent to a spermatozoon; the megagamete is the female and equivalent to an egg-cell.

In place of many female elements, which the primitive or ancestral forms may be assumed to have had,4 there is always, save possibly for one exception,5 only a single relatively huge megagamete formed, which offers a comparatively easy goal for one of the many microgametes.

The fragments of the karyosome, which are, as it were, squeezed out to the exterior, exert a powerful attraction upon the microgametes, many of which swarm round the now mature megagamete.