THE RESERVE MATERIALS OF PLANTS. 81 



serves may be found deposited in the form of granular 

 masses, which stain reddish with iodine. According to 

 Errera the reserve oil of the fundus can give rise to similar 

 formations. The mode of this transformation must, how- 

 ever, be very different. The deposition of these grains of 

 glycogen has also been studied by Belzung (32), who has 

 seen the process in the hyphse of several species. He 

 describes them as starch grains of small size, rather than 

 glycogen. As, however, his opinion of their nature is 

 derived from staining them with iodine, too much stress 

 need not be laid upon this point, particularly as in a later 

 paper he says that some of them are coloured brown by the 

 reagent. 



He describes their deposition as associated with the 

 presence of certain corpuscular bodies which themselves 

 are stained brown with iodine. These he conjectures to 

 be of the same nature as the chlorophyll bodies of the 

 higher plants, on the origin and nature of which he holds 

 peculiar views. Whatever be their origin they appear to 

 function in the way of Schimper's leucoplasts, and to deposit 

 the carbohydrate material, whether glycogen or starch, in 

 definite granular form. 



In these plants the consumption of the reserve carbo- 

 hydrate takes place particularly during the development of 

 the perithecia and the formation of the spores. The latter 

 do not, however, contain any glycogen, their reserves 

 taking the form of oil. On their germination, however, 

 as the oil disappears the young hyphse are often found to 

 contain transitory glycogen, much as in the germination of 

 oily seeds the young tissues contain transitory starch. 



Though the details of the transformations are obscure, 

 there seems to be little doubt that the two bodies are 

 intimately connected with one another. Also that in the 

 fungus the glycogen takes the place occupied in the green 

 plant by starch. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



(19) Osborne and Voorhees. Proteids of the Wheat Kernel. 



Journal of the American Chemical Society, xvi., No. 8, Aug., 



1894. 



6 



