ORIGIN AND MORPHOLOGY OF.CHLOROPHYLL CORPUSCLES. 237 



On Recent Researches into tlie Origin and 

 Morphology of Chlorophyll Corpuscles 

 and Allied Bodies. 



By 



F. O. Bower, M;.A., 



Lecturer on Botany at the Normal School of Science, South Kensington. 



With Plate XXII. 



The readers of the ' Quarterly Journal of Microscopical 

 Science ' will already be acquainted with the earlier researches 

 of A. F. W. Schimper, " On the Development of Starch-grains,'^ 

 a translation of his paper, published under the above heading 

 in the ' Botanische Zeitung ' (1880), having appeared in vol. 

 xxi (1881) of this Journal. 



Not only did his observations detailed in that paper confirm 

 those of Sachs and Naegeli on the formation of starch- grains 

 in the chlorophyll corpuscles of green parts of plants, but they 

 led him also to a clearer knowledge of the mode of formation 

 of starch-grains in parts of plants which are not green. He 

 found " that starch-grains, which are there in process of devel- 

 opment, are not surrounded by ordinary protoplasm, but that 

 they are contained in, or attached to, peculiar highly refrac- 

 tive corpuscles ; these are usually spherical or spindle-shaped," 

 and are present before the starch-grains. Their reactions 

 showed that they consist of albuminoid substances, and he 

 concluded that their function is the conversion into starch of 

 the assimilated substances which have been conveyed from 

 other parts of the plant. On this ground he gave them the 



