916 RECORD OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



coal was still plastic. His experiments showing that the principal 

 constituents of vegetable bodies become, when exposed to heat and 

 pressure, converted into substances very like coal, are exceedingly- 

 interesting. 



New Carbo-hydrate.* — Prof. Schmiedeberg describes a new carbo- 

 hydrate of the formula CgHigOs, discovered in the bulbs of Urginea 

 Scilla, and hitherto described as a gnm, fur which he proposes the name 

 sinistrin. When pure it is colourless, a white powder when dx'y, absorb- 

 ing water readily from the air, and then becoming transparent and 

 gum-like. It is soluble in water, insoluble in absolute alcohol, is not 

 coloured by iodine, does not reduce oxide of copper. Sinistrin is pre- 

 cipitated from its aqueous solution by acetate of lead when there is 

 great excess of ammonia, but not otherwise ; when decomposed with 

 lime-water, a slightly soluble amorphous lime-compound is produced. 

 Sinistrin rotates the pole of polarized light to the left ; the concentra- 

 tion and temperature of the solution have no influence on the amount 

 of rotation. Saliva and yeast do not saccharify it ; but when a dilute 

 solution is warmed with from one to four per cent, of sulphuric acid, it 

 passes over altogether into sugar. This sinistrin-sugar probably con- 

 sists of levulose and an optically inactive sugar, apparently in the 

 proportion of 5 to 1. Sinistrin is contained in such quantities in the 

 bulbs, along with sugar, that it constitutes the greater part of their 

 dried substance. The author considers it probable that sinistrin is 

 formed from the direct products of assimilation. The pure cellulose of 

 the bulb, when decomposed by dilute acids, yields no trace of levulose, 

 but only sugars with rotation to the right. 



Calcium phosphate in the Living Cells of Plants.!— In examin- 

 ing the leaves of Soja liisjnda and Bohinia jJseudacacia, MM. Nobbe, 

 Hanlein, and Councler found, especially in the first-named species, 

 in the parenchymatous cells of the mesophyll, a quantity of peculiar, 

 colourless, moderately refractive bodies, of a roundish, elliptical, or 

 ovoid form, their average size about that of the cell-nucleus, one, or 

 rarely two in a cell. A careful investigation of these structures 

 showed that they consisted of calcium ortho-phosphate, 



B. CRYPTOGAMIA. 



Crjrptogamia Vascularia. 



Germination of Fern-spores.t — Eecent observations by Eauwen- 

 hoff, of Utrecht, point to a somewhat different interpretation from 

 that at i^resent generally accepted of the first processes in the germi- 

 nation of the spores of ferns and other vascular cryptogams. 



The phenomena presented by the germination of a fern-spore are 

 as follows : — A more or less considerable (but often very small) 

 swelling of the exospore takes place from absorption of water. After 

 some time — less or more according to the species — the wall of the 



* ' Zeitschr. Physiol. Chemie,' 1879, p. 112; see ' Bot. Zeit.,' xxxvii. (1879) p. 513. 

 t ' Landwirthschaftliche Versuchs-statiouen,' xxiii, p. 471 ; see ' Natur- 

 forscher,' xii. (1879) p. 276. 



X ' Bot. Zeit.,' xxxvii. (1879) p. 441. 



