116 Transactions of the Society. 



his extracted body is liardly'soluble in warm absolute alcohol or 

 chloroform ; it is insoluble in acetone, absolute ether or mixtures of 

 alcohol and ether ; with aq. dist. it forms an ultramicroscopic 

 emulsion, and has no action on polarized light. Chromic acid and 

 bichromate of potash transform the lipin into an insoluble product. 

 Osmic acid is reduced by it very slowly, even at a temperature of 

 60'' C. It should not be considered that tests of which the above 

 is a specimen apply to the cell intra vitam during the process of 

 fixing, because Carnoy's fluid, which is a mixture of alcohol 

 absolute, acetic acid and chloroform, will be found to sweep every- 

 thing out of the cytoplasm of the Ascaris ovum. This of course 

 need not vitiate the truth of Faure-Fremiet's experiments in vitro ; 

 but it must be remembered that such in vitro experiments do not 

 shed much light on the problems we have before us, and often do 

 not agree with the evidence of the microscope. It seems certain 

 that the Golgi rods contain small quantities of some fatty sub- 

 stance which, judging from the OSO4 test (Kopsch), might be 

 olein, but this test is very meagre evidence. By iixing a tissue 

 lirst in formalin and subsequently treating in OSO4 (Sjovall) it is 

 often possible to blacken the mitochondria, the formalin having 

 the effect of assisting the reduction of the OSO4, though OsOi by 

 itself very rarely blackens the mitochondria ; the mitochondria in 

 the larger oocytes in the frog ovary go black in Kopsch (OSO4). 



While the Golgi apparatus and the mitochondria closely 

 resemble each other in the fact that both have as their basis a 

 substratum of protoplasm, the associated "fatty" or lipin sub- 

 stances also in each are often very closely similar in chemical 

 nature, though I have never found that they were quite similar. 

 The formol or chrome fixation followed by iron-hnematoxylin 

 as a stain seems to bring both mitochondria and Golgi rods into 

 evidence by the fact that the formol or chrome fixes and makes 

 stainable the protoplasmic basis. Possibly it is the albuminous 

 part also which impregnates in Golgi or Cajal's method. On the 

 other hand, Kopsch's method and Sjovall's method (OSO4) appear 

 to depend on the presence of some associated " fatty " substance 

 in either the Golgi rod or mitochondrium, and the former contains 

 more of this " fatty " substance than the latter. 



In his recent monograph dealing with "Lecithin and Allied 

 Substances " Maclean (o) says of the function of lipins, which are 

 found in all parts of the body, " A perusal of the results of the 

 work undertaken to elucidate the biological significance of the 

 lipins justifies the assertion, that so far tlie special part played by 

 the lipins in the activity of the organism is entirely unknown to 

 us." This is a modern bio-chemist's view ; it may be unduly 

 pessimistic, but it illustrates the fact that our knowledge of the 

 connexion between these substances and the vital phenomena of 

 the cell is still a blank. Possibly a more complete liaison between 



