346 PROFESSOR E. RAY LANKESTER. 



piece of protoplasm adherent to each (fig. 9 d, PI. XX) will 

 be seen to have a pink colour, but is still perfectly homo- 

 geneous. 



Similarly the colourless protoplasm within the green cor- 

 puscles of Hydra will take up a pink colour when strong 

 staining with picro-carmine is used; but nothing of the 

 nature of a nucleus have I ever seen in these corpuscles, 

 although the little granules within the corpuscles of Hydra 

 might lead to the impression that a nucleus is present, 

 (figs. 20, 23) if one were not acquainted with their true 

 nature, as isolated granules of green-coloured substance 

 lying within the corpuscle. 



It seems to me possible that Dr. Brandt has been misled 

 by these granules. At the same time it is possible that 

 hsematoxylin brings into view a nucleus-like structure, 

 which picrocarmine does not. Even if this were the case, 

 when we remember that the chlorophyll-bodies of plants 

 are looked upon by botanists as similar in their nature to 

 nuclei, it does not seem that we should have any ground 

 for regarding the chlorophyll-corpuscles as independent 

 organisms. 



Dr. Brandt's observation of the formation of starch in the 

 isolated chlorophyll-corpuscles (paragraph 4) is extremely 

 interesting and important. It does not seem to me to tend 

 in any way to prove that the corpuscles are independent 

 organisms. It would simply prove (if fully established) that 

 a bit cf protoplasm with its associated envelope or cap of 

 green substance can retain its vital activity just as a piece 

 of an Amoeba can. At the same time what I note as espe- 

 cially interesting is that Dr. Brandt does not state that he 

 has observed starch-grains in association with the chloro- 

 phyll-corpuscles when observed in fresh living cells of 

 Spongilla (or of Hydra). I have failed to detect starch in 

 such position in living Spongilla-cells, though I have found 

 abundant amyloid substance in other parts of the sponge- 

 cell. I have also, only in the rarest cases, found a minute 

 trace of starch in association with the chlorophyll-corpuscles 

 of Hydra viridis. 



This absence of starch from the living chlorophyll- 

 corpuscles when in the sponge-cell, or Hydra's eudoderm- 

 cell, must necessarily appear remarkable. I have been 

 driven to the conclusion that the activity of the chlorophyll- 

 corpuscles in these animals in sunlight gives rise to a body 

 similar to that which arises under the same conditions in 

 plants, but that in place of being deposited in the corpuscle 

 as starch-grains, it is rapidly diflfused and chemically changed 



