SECT, i] PHYSICO-CHEMICAL SYSTEM 361 



in the contents of the cell itself, he had recourse to eggs, and for those 

 of the herring obtained the following distribution : 



Ratios on the basis of Na 100 



Na K Ca Mg CI 



100 216-7 ii'4 18-7 356-8 



This stood in marked contrast not only with the vertebrate blood- 

 plasma but also with the Archaean sea water calculated for the 

 time at which life first began to appear in it, thus : 



Vertebrate blood-plasma (dog) 



6-6 2.8 0-7 139-5 



Archaean sea water 



100 100-250 10 0-05 



But after extraction of the dried eggs with water in a Soxhlet 

 apparatus, the determination of the ratio of salts in the soluble part 

 gave results more like the ratio for the Archaean sea water: 



100 219-9 5'6 1-6 359-2 



McCallum therefore concluded that the soluble part of the ash of 

 the herring's egg exhibits a palaeo-chemical ratio. The bond shown 

 here between the metals and the organic substances is useful in 

 reminding us that even in fish eggs, where the anion/cation ratio is 

 well above unity, some of the metal as well as the acid radicles may 

 be united in organic combination. 



The relation between the salts in the intermicellar fluid of yolk 

 and those in the dispersed phase itself has been studied by Bialasce- 

 wicz and by Vladimirov. Bialascewicz worked firstly with the yolks 

 of Torpedo eggs, but also with those of the hen and the trout. He 

 prepared series of mixtures of the yolk with diluents in different 

 concentrations, such as isotonic solutions of lithium sulphate and 

 lithium nitrate, or in some cases distilled water, and then, submitting 

 the mixtures to ultra-filtration, he estimated the ash and its com- 

 position in the filtrate and the residue. He first found that the 

 percentage of chlorine bound to the dispersed phase in the ooplasm 

 was practically independent of the degree of dilution, and from this 

 fact he was able to calculate the volume of the intermicellar fluid 

 of the yolk (see Table 48). For the hen's egg this was 0-549 c.cm, per 



