THE ACTION OF ETHER ON PROTOPLASM. 469 



division and therefore acted as anesthetic (16). As a matter of 

 fact there is no difficulty in reconciling the two sets of observa- 

 tions. For it seems certain that what is anesthetic for mitosis 

 is not necessarily anesthetic for protoplasmic streaming. An 

 increased fluidity of the protoplasm would doubtless increase 

 the speed of streaming, and yet such a cell with rapidly flowing 

 protoplasm would scarcely be able to undergo a mitotic division 

 and would therefore be anesthetized so far as cell-division was 

 concerned. This is essentially the view taken by Weber (19) 

 who points out that there is full accord in the investigation of 

 both plant and animal cells. 



Doubtless protoplasmic activity involves frequent changes in 

 colloidal condition. Presumably any agent which prevents such 

 changes in colloidal condition without causing death may act as 

 an anesthetic. If this view is correct then either an increased 

 liquefaction or a coagulation of the protoplasm may result in 

 anesthesia. This idea was presented a number of years ago, and 

 it was pointed out that there may very well be two kinds of 

 anesthesia (20). 



In earlier work it was claimed that those solutions of ether 

 which act as an anesthetic for the process of cell-division in the 

 sea-urchin egg cause a liquefaction of the protoplasm (16, 20). 

 More concentrated solutions were found to cause a coagulation 

 which was irreversible. All these facts have recently been called 

 into question by Chambers (21). He claims that anesthesia in 

 the sea-urchin egg is accompanied by an increase rather than a 

 decrease in viscosity and that this condition of increased viscosity 

 is reversible. Chambers' opinion is based on observations of 

 Brownian movement as well as on a study with the microdis- 

 section apparatus. 



It is evident that the findings of Chambers are in direct 

 opposition to the earlier work mentioned above. An attempt 

 was therefore made to repeat the older observations with the 

 centrifuge method to determine if perhaps an error may not 

 have been involved. In this repetition an effort was made to 

 obtain more nearly quantitative results. 



Experiments were performed both with fertilized and un- 

 fertilized eggs. We will consider the unfertilized eggs first. 



