NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



Chlorophyll in Turbellarian Worms and other Animals. — 

 Mr. Patrick Geddes has recently investigated the physiology 

 and histology of the small green Planarian Co7ivoluta 

 Schultzii, and communicated his results in a highly sugges- 

 tive paper to the Royal Society (' Proceedings/ No. 194). 

 Mr. Geddes obtained these -worms in large quantity at 

 Roscoff, the zoological observatory of Prof, Lacaze Duthiers. 

 He has. succeeded in obtaining from a number of them, 

 enclosed in an inverted glass vessel and exposed to sun- 

 light, a quantity of gas which on analysis (by means of 

 pyrogallic acid) proved to contain from 43 to 52 per cent, 

 of pure oxygen. This is the first direct proof of the evo- 

 lution of oxygen gas through the agency of the chlorophyll 

 contained in the tissues of animals of so high an organisation 

 as the Planarian worms ; though it was from Euglena, an 

 animal Flagellate that Priestley obtained oxygen gas, even 

 before it was known to be given off by plants. The exact 

 nature of the chlorophylloid substance has not been deter- 

 mined by Mr. Geddes. It has the general properties of the 

 green colouring matter of vegetable tissues, but which of the 

 constituents of that somewhat variable substance are present 

 has not yet been determined. Leaving aside the unicellular 

 organisms, we have at present knowledge of substances 

 similar to leaf-green in the tissues of the Sponge Spongilla, 

 of the Polyps Hydra, and Anthea cereus, of the Planarians 

 Vortex viridis and Convohita Schultzii, of the Gephyraean 

 Bonellia, of the Chsetopod Chsetopterus and of the Crusta- 

 cean Idotea. Of these cases only that of Spongilla and of 

 Bonellia have been studied with special care as to their ab- 

 sorption spectra, and it is to Mr. Sorby's papers in vol. xv 

 of this Journal that we must refer for a minute account of 

 them. Mr. Sorby showed by spectroscopic evidence that 

 the green matter of Spongilla contains the scmie con- 

 stituents (though differing quantitatively) as do the leaves of 

 green plants, namely, blue chlorophyll, yellow chlorophyll, 

 orange xanthophyll, xanthophyll, yellow xanthophyll, and 

 lichnoxanthine. In a later paper (this Journal, vol. xv, p. 

 166) he showed that the green colouring matter of Bonellia, 

 though exceedingly close in spectrum and physical properties 

 to the three species of chlorophyll distinguished by him 



