68 



OTTO GLASER. 



filtration, that portion of the agglutinin which is recoverable in 

 this manner is hardly the product of chemical breakdown suffered 

 by the amboceptor molecule. For the ultra-conservative I may 

 add that owing to the construction of the filter, a remnant of 

 the secretion always fails to pass through. This remnant shows 

 a higher agglutinating power than the original secretion. More- 

 over lest someone be led to suspect confusion, lipolysin can be 

 isolated from the filtrates of such mechanical separations. Its 

 presence in these is incidentally also revealed by activating 

 effects on spermatozoa, a property the lipolysin shares with 

 many other substances including preparations of pancreatic lipase. 



III. 



With our minds cleared on the one-body-two-body issue, we 

 can ask and attempt to answer other specific questions. Among 

 these we must include some further inquiries concerning the 

 lipolysin. Is this substance really a lipolytic ferment? The 

 evidence submitted so far is not conclusive because a decrease in 

 the volume of oil drops might be the expression of changes in 

 surface tension. But even if such shrinkage could be shown 

 to result exclusively from hydrolysis, the question would still 



100 



200 



300 



Minutes 



FIG. i. Abscissa = minutes; ordinate = drops (i/ioo c.c.) 11/40 NaOH neces- 

 sary to maintain system at PH 7. Both curves are the result of experimental 

 averages and are slightly conventionalized. The lower one with experimental 

 points at the apices of the triangles, represents the hydrolysis of ethyl butyrate 

 in sea-water; the upper curve with experimental points in circles, represents the 

 hydrolysis of ethyl butyrate in arbacia egg-secretion. 



