216 Pennington — A Chemico- Physiological 



ing shoots of certain plants that etiolation tends to pro- 

 duce a large amount of asparagine, and accounts for the 

 accumulation of the amide by the carbohydrate having 

 been used up, while nitrogen assimilation can proceed 

 independently of light. From such experiments we may 

 suppose that either the proteid decomposes in yielding 

 the amide, or that it is produced synthetically and not 

 further used because of a lack of suitable combining 

 material. As there can be little doubt but that amides 

 are, under normal conditions, synthetically formed as inter- 

 mediate products toward the building up of proteid, the 

 latter supposition is more likely to be the correct one. 



In order to determine if possible the role of trimethyl- 

 amine in Spirogyra, the plant was de-starched and kept in 

 darkness for about thirty- six hours. A portion was then 

 placed in a large test tube containing sufficient water, and 

 the tube tightly corked. After standing in the dark for 

 about half an hour, the cork was removed and the odor of 

 trimethylamine was plainly detected. Heating with potass- 

 ium hydrate gave a larger amount than was obtained 

 from starch-containing cells, showing that the amine had 

 accumulated in the cells which were kept in the dark. 



While the less complex nitrogenous substances can be 

 found in the leaves and steins of healthy plants, neither 

 sugar, starch nor amide is to be detected in the actively 

 growing tip, the energy here being so great that there is 

 immediately a union of carbohydrate and nitrogen com- 

 pound, the amount of each constituent being present in 

 exactly the correct proportion to form proteid. In other 

 parts of the plant, where the activity is not so great, the 

 separate constituents can be detected in the cell. If tri- 

 methylamine is a synthetic product, does it ever, when 

 growth conditions are favorable, accumulate in the cell, or 

 is it given off in the water by the plant ? 



Bokorny* has found that Spirogyra remained healthy in 

 a 0.05 per cent, solution of trimethylamine neutralized with 



* Chemiker Ztg., 1894, No. 2. 



