1915] 



DAVIS — ENZYME ACTION IN MARINE ALGAE 779 



Florideae-starch from Furcellaria fastigiata, that was readily 

 hydrolysed to dextrose by malt diastase, and it will be re- 

 membered that Bartholemew ('14) isolated diastase from 

 several of the "reds" that split phanerogamic starch to re- 

 ducing sugars. 



Simple sugars. — Very little work has been done on the di- 

 and monosaccharides of the "reds." Tihomirov ('10) suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining the same yellow amorphous osozone de- 

 posits in the tissues of Sphaerococcus crispus and Gigartina 

 mamillosa that he had in certain members of the "greens" 

 and "browns," but here, as in the other groups, the specific 

 osozone involved could not be determined. 



FATS AS STORAGE PRODUCTS 



Many observations have made it evident that fats in some 

 form or other are generally present in the algae, their 

 peculiar role, however, having been very little investigated. 

 In some of the siphonaceous forms, particularly Vaucheria, 

 they seem to replace carbohydrates. Whether fats are to be 

 regarded as the first visible products of assimilation in these 

 forms is disputed. Some workers hold them to be reserve 

 products, some by-products of metabolism. If they are 

 utilized as a reserve or storage product in any of the forms, 

 one might expect to find evidences of lipolytic action, yet none 

 has been reported so far. 



As stated by Czapek ('13, p. 761), Loew and Bokorny find 

 that Spirogyra and other filamentous forms contain 6 to 9 

 per cent of the dry weight as fat. This probably includes 

 lecithin. The same authority gives the following results as 

 obtained by Sestini, the figures being percentages of the dry 



weight : 



Vaucheria pilus 2 . 94 



Viva latissima 21 



Fucus vesiculosus 67 



Valonia aegagropila 15 



Gracilaria confervoides 



.11 



Konig and Bettels ( '05) made a large number of analyses of 

 the dry tissues of a variety of marine algae and found a fat 



