8 Stop es and Pnjii, The nutritive relations of the surrounding tissues etc 



grains scatfr red throughoul the winde oytoplasm as well aa in a 

 definite zone just at the perifery where they were so thiokly 

 olustered as to make an almosl Bolid black band round the edge 

 of the egg when stained with [odine. When examined with an 

 oU immersion lens these smal] round graina appeared in general 

 clustered together in gronps Erom 2 to 1<» or 20; each group 

 appearing to be formed in oDe leucoplasl (cf. fig. 6) but there 

 were also a few single larger grains lying in the oytoplasm separate 

 Erom tlie others. The starch grains in the egg were different in 

 character and appearance Erom those in the endosperm cells. Jn 

 general they stained rather brownisb violet which shews t hat they 

 contained amylodextrine. Some of the grains in the endosperm 

 cells next to the empty jacket layer were also more brownish 

 staining and smaller. probably in a partly dissolved condition, 

 while the rest of the endosperm was packed with large, brightly 

 bluish-violet staining grains of storage starch which later on were 

 also dissolved to snpply the egg. Thus the zone of emptying cells 

 travels continually outwards from the egg cells, leaving a zone of 

 empty cells immediately round them. We do not find that these 

 empty cells are disintegrating or abnormal in any way, they are 

 merely deprived of their owii stores and then serve as the path of 

 trausmission for the food stuft's from the other cells to the egg cell. 

 They and their nuclei retain their integrity throughont this stage 

 of passage of food to the egg. 



Similar facts have been observed in various other species of 

 Oycads. In Macrozamia sjnralis however the deposition of the 

 protein grains appears to preceed that of the starch. for in young 

 egg cells we found many large protein grains scattered thickly 

 through the whole substance of the egg cell, while the starch was 

 only just beginning to be deposited in a few of the endosperm 

 cells at the base of the Archegonia. In the jacket cells we 

 observed also small protein grains which had the appearance of so 

 called "extra nucleolar nucleoli" when stained with triple stain and 

 to which we will refer again. For this species of Macrozamia we 

 had only alcohol material, but so far as we could judge the sugar 

 present appeared to be cane sugar, at least in the stage we 

 examined, for we got many gluc-ozozone crystals formed by the 

 acetate of Phenylhydrazin test only when the test was made after the 

 inversion process had been previously carried on. In this species 

 the starch grains appear in the perifery of the egg rather later 

 than usual. 



In later stages of all the species of Cycads examined, the 

 starch again disappears from the egg cell as well as from the 

 sheath cells and the immediately surrounding endosperm cells. as 

 it is turned into soluble carbohydrates and used by the growing egg. 



In the ripening seed, the quantity of starch in the endosperm, 

 as is well known, is very great except in the zone just by the egg 

 cell. The cells however cannot be described as "füll of starch" 

 as there is such a large quantity of protein substance in definite 

 grains that when tested with Mi Hon 's reagent the endosperm 



