388 MARIANNA VAN HERWERDEN 
on the alveolar walls, suggests that they may be identical with the 
building stones of the chromidia. But every reader of my paper will 
understand that this is not the essential point of my argument in dis- 
cussing Schaxel’s emission hypothesis. 
I quite agree with Miss Beckwith that similarity in staining reac- 
tions is not sufficient for the identification of materials. Emphasizing 
this very point in my paper, I introduced the nuclease digestion as a 
convincing microchemical test, and I only regret that Miss Beckwith 
did not make use of this method, for I believe that for this special 
case it would have had a greater value than her attempts to accept or 
reject the identity of the chromatin and the basophilic granules in the 
cytoplasm. 
To avoid any misconception, I must add, further, that the demon- 
stration of nucleinic-acid compounds in the cytoplasm of the egg of 
the sea-urchin does not in any way imply their introduction from the 
nucleus; it is possible that they have been generated in loco by chemi- 
cal changes. 
THE AUTHOR’S REPLY 
In reply to Dr. van Herwerden’s comments may I say that I regret 
exceedingly having, in my brief summary, in any degree misinter- 
preted her article. That the difficulty is due to a misunderstanding 
both on my part and hers, I shall hope to show. I have reread with 
great care Dr. van Herwerden’s article (Arch. fiir Zellforsch., Bd. 10, 
1913) to see wherein I have failed to understand it. In regard to the 
first point mentioned, i.e., that I quoted her as saying that the baso- 
philic granules are artifacts, it is evident that my summary, as well as 
her original statement, is none too clear. I find no reference to an 
earlier article in which she believes that that point is evident. That 
I understood basophilic granules to be visible in the living mature egg, 
and so stated, is seen from a sentence preceding the one she quoted 
(p. 215) in which I said that she had described the mitochondria (baso- 
philic granules) as visible in life in the mature egg. May I correct here 
her impression regarding a minor point. I did not say, as she quotes 
me as saying, that she ‘‘could not have seen them in the living egg,” 
but that she dzd not see them in the young living egg. This last state- 
ment of mine, that she did not see the basophilic granules in the young 
living oocyte, she may question with justice. I evidently mistook 
her statement to the effect that some young cells showed no granules 
to mean all cells (p. 440) and my conclusion is therefore erroneous on 
that point. 
In regard to my further statement that the chromidia of fixed mate- 
rial are artifacts, in view of Dr. van Herwerden’s more recent comment, 
I see that I misinterpreted the following sentence (p. 439); ‘Ich halte 
also die Chromidienstruktur dieser Zellen fur ein Kunstproduct. Die 
Herkunft und die Bedeutung der basophilen Kérner in den Eizellen. 
welche die Baustein dieser Chromidien bilden etc.,’’ having understood 
