IRON COMPOUNDS IN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE CELLS. 269 
proteid molecules attached to the iron-containing nuclein or 
nucleinic acid may more greatly affect the activity of the 
reagent than those of the vegetable cell are capable of doing. 
Since, on the other hand, hemoglobin, which, as I have 
pointed out, is derived, in Amblystoma, from chromatin, 
occurs in a large number of animal forms, but is present 
in no vegetable organism, it would appear to follow that 
the iron is combined in animal chromatin in a way unlike 
that in which it is held in the vegetable cell.! 
The apparently universal occurrence of such iron com- 
pounds renders intelligible the fate of the iron salts absorbed 
by plants from the soil, and of the iron compounds found 
by Raulin®? and Molisch? to be necessary for the growth of 
Aspergillus niger. Chromatin, to the formation of which 
the iron absorbed contributes, is, as the results of cytological 
investigations show, a substance of primary importance to the 
cell, and a diminution in, or a cessation of, the supply of 
iron to the vegetable organism, which produces the condition 
known as chlorosis, instead of affecting only the formation of 
its chlorophyll, as generally supposed, strikes at its very life. 
The conditions known as anemia and chlorosis in the 
higher Vertebrates have been hitherto explained as caused 
by a diminished production of hzmoglobin directly from 
organic or inorganic iron compounds absorbed by the intes- 
tine from the food matters; but they must now be referred 
to a deficient supply of the primary iron-containing com- 
1 Compounds which appear to resemble, somewhat remotely, the hematins 
of animal organisms have been found in Palmella cruenta (Phipson, “Sur 
la matiére colorante du Palmella cruenta,”’ ‘Comptes Rendus,’ vol. 
Ixxxix, p. 316, 1879), and in Aspergillus niger (Linossier, “Sur une 
hématine végétale ; l’aspergilline, pigment des spores de l’Aspergillus 
niger,” ‘Comptes Rendus,’ vol. exii, p. 489, 1891). The colouring matter 
of the latter is, as I have found, held in the membrane, but not in crypto- 
plasm of the spore, and it would, therefore, appear to be simply a degeneration 
product. 
2 « Btudes chimiques sur la végétation,” ‘ Annales des Sc. Nat.,’ Bot., Série 
5, vol. xi, 1869, p. 93. 
3 Op. cit., pp. 97—117. 
