CHARLES THOM 513 



tivity have proved commercially practicable in a sufficient number of cases to en- 

 courage the belief that much wider use of these organisms will eventually be made. 



Members of the yellow-green series of species or races variously designated A. 

 flavus, Link, or A. oryzae (Ahlberg) Cohn, or the two names hyphenated as the A. 

 flaims-oryzae series, are widely used in Japan, China, and the East Indies in fermenta- 

 tion. This utilization takes two forms. The starch of the rice grain is saccharified by 

 the enzyme secreted by the mold, thus furnishing the sugar solution necessary for 

 yeast growth and alcohol production. Rice fermentation in this way is made the 

 first step in the manufacture of sake and related alcoholic liquors. Certain strains 

 selected as favorable for this purpose are propagated upon a large scale and sold as 

 inoculating material. Similarly, other strains were found capable of breaking down 

 the proteins of the soy bean, making possible the production of soy sauce, miso, and 

 many other products which consist primarily of bean proteins more or less completely 

 broken down by the proteolytic ferments of the mold. Extensive investigations of 

 these activities have been made in Japan by T. Takahashi and his associates at 

 Tokio, by Hanzawa, and by Oshima at Sapporo. Oshima, and Oshima and Church, 

 working at Washington, found certain strains to produce large quantities of proteo- 

 lytic enzyme, and little amylolytic enzyme, others large quantities of amylolytic 

 enzyme and little proteolytic enzyme. Between these extremes they found gradations 

 to forms with both enzymes fairly equally balanced. 



Takamine, working in America with other selected races of this group, developed 

 "Taka diastase" as a commercial enzymic preparation. In addition, they and others 

 have developed crude enzyme solutions widely useful in desizing operations in the tex- 

 tile industry. Under rigorous testing such enzyme solutions are found to contain not 

 one but many enzymes which represent the range of metabolic activity of the mold 

 species used in their manufacture. 



There remain several species aggregates whose function in nature and whose 

 possibiHties of usefulness to man are scarcely known. All are factors in the disintegra- 

 t'on of organic matter. As grown in laboratory media, investigators have recorded 

 the source of their cultures and some of the routine reactions obtained, although little 

 systematic effort has been made to follow them to their natural environment and 

 attribute to them specific effects. 



The white Aspergilli (.4. candidus Link and its allies) are cosmopolitan. Morpho- 

 logically they are almost identical with the black Aspergilli, lacking only the produc- 

 tion of the coloring substance aspergillin. These species are, however, less vigorous 

 growers, somewhat smaller in mass as usually encountered, and appear late in the 

 progress of decomposition after other organisms have ceased to be active. Their 

 presence at this stage in the degeneration of organic matter is strikingly constant. 

 Cereals in the later stages of rot, fodder much disintegrated, and stored manure con- 

 stantly show fruiting patches of white Aspergilli. Comparative cultures of a few of 

 these forms have indicated active enzyme production. One of them, A. okazakii, has 

 been exploited commercially, but no systematic study of organisms representing the 

 whole group has yet been made. 



The A . versicolor series of species or races compete with .1 . candidus series in many 



