G82 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1883. 



of assimilation, and cites the fact that when a solntion of sugar is ap- 

 plied to the cut surfaces of herbaceous plants starch appears at once in 

 the chlorophyll-grains. Arthur Meyer has a paper in the Bot. Zeitung 

 on crystalloids of trophoplasts and on chromoplasts of angiosperms. 

 Pringsheim, in Bericht. Deutsch. Bot. Gesell. gives the name of cellulin- 

 grains to bodies found in hyphse and oogonia of Sa/prolegniece, which he 

 says have been mistaken by Zoff for amreboid bodies. They resemble 

 in their chemical nature cellulose, but do not give the same colors with 

 the ordinary tests. They do not appear to be capable of assimilation, 

 but are rather excretory products. Errara reports that true glycogen, 

 identical with the glycogen of animals is found in fungi, especially in 

 some Ascomycetes where it at first pervades the whole plant but after- 

 wards accumulates in the asci. 



The coloring matters of plants, more particularly the non-green colors, 

 are elaborately treated in two papers ; one by Fritzsch, in Priugsheim's 

 Jakrbiicher, and the other by Pick in the Bot. Gentralblatt. Borodin, 

 in Bull. Acad. Imp. St. Petersburg, has a paper showing the wide distri- 

 bution iu plants of some crystalline pigments, related to chlorophyll. 

 Lemaire, in Ann. Sci. Nat., states that besides cutiuization the epidermis 

 of plants is capable of lignification. Zacharias, in Bot. Zeitung, in an 

 article on albumen, nuclein, and plastin, states that a great part of the 

 starch- builders is composed of albumen, which is also found in smaller 

 amounts in chlorophyll-grains. 



The subject of the direct connection of the protoplasm of adjoining- 

 cells through openings in the cell walls, which has long been known to 

 be the case in Floridece, and which has recently been shown by Gardiner 

 to be true also in the sensitive organs of some plants as Mimosa pudica, 

 has given rise during the present year to several papers. W. Hillhouse, 

 in Bot. Gentralblatt, shows that a connection of the protoplasm of adja- 

 cent cells is not limited to Mimosa, but is much more general than had 

 been suspected. Gardiner, in Proc. Roy. Soc. London, confirms this 

 fact, and Russow goes so far as to say that " in every plant during its 

 whole life the mass of protoplasm is continuous." 



De Vries, in Bot. Zeitung, in an article on the part which vegetable 

 acids play in the tnrgescence of growing organs, thinks that in great 

 part they act merely by assisting the roots to absorb salts of potash. 

 The Ann. Sci. Nat. contains the results of Vesque's experiments on the 

 direct observation of the movement of the water in the vessels of plants. 

 He says that there is a movement of water when the vessels are full of 

 water or when long columns of water are separated by air-bubbles. 

 But when small amounts of water and air-bubbles are alternately 

 arranged there is no motion. 



Volkens, in Jalirb. Bot. Gart. Berlin, has shown the relation of water- 

 pores to underlying tissues in a large number of species belonging to 

 3G families. A very full treatise by Famintzin an metastasis and met- 

 amorphosis of energy in plants has appeared in Schrift. Akad, St. 



