STARCH, 283 
into small groups, which are ultimately restricted to the ciliated 
chambers. 
In Spongilla, the only sponge inhabiting fresh water, an asexual 
process of reproduction also occurs. Certain of the amoebiform 
sarcoids retract their processes, become surrounded except at one 
point, by a spiculigerous wall, and after a period of rest are set free 
in the water and each reproduces the parent form. 
The affinities of the sponges are very imperfectly understood, 
and they are among the most difficult animals to assign to their 
proper place in any system of classification. The resemblance of 
the sarcoids to Amcebz and Flagellate Infusoria is so close, that 
from a study of the mature forms they would be unhesitatingly 
placed in the lowest sub-kingdom—the Protozoa, But among the 
Protozoa sexual reproduction is very rare, and a segmented ovum 
with the subsequent formation of a multicellular gastrula is a 
thing altogether unknown, while this character unites the sponges 
with the members of the next higher sub-kingdom—the Ccelenterata, 
from which, however, they differ very widely in their subsequent 
development.—Cole’s Studies. 
Sol BR Gable 
From Co.e’s STUDIES. 
HEN exposed to sunshine, all green parts of healthy living 
plants, and especially the leaves, are the seat of remarkable 
chemical activity. The air, with its small but all-sufficient quantity 
of carbon dioxide, which has gained access to the green cells by 
means of the stomata and the intercellular passages, and the water 
forming the chief constituent of the cell sap, being brought into 
close relation to each other there result a series of most important 
synthetical operations which cannot be brought about by any 
other means known to chemists. Under the influence of the sun- 
shine and the chlorophyll the carbon dioxide (C O.) is decomposed, 
its oxygen is liberated, and the carbon and the water unite with 
each other directly, in certain proportions, to form organic com- 
pounds of greater or less complexity, which are used by the plant 
for the growth of the young cells, and the nutrition of all living 
parts. Among these first products of assém7lation,* as this process 
* This term is here used in the perverted sense customary among botanists, 
Properly assimilation is the process by which the prepared nutriment is incor- 
porated with the actual substance of the plant, and becomes part of its body. 
