[Vor. 3 
452 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 
here are merely indicative of the true conditions as they exist 
in nature, since the nutrition in the two cases is different. 
We know from the work done by Le Renard (712) that the 
composition of the nutrient medium used in such Petri dish 
plates has a marked influence on the effect of any toxic sub- 
stance present; that is, if the nutritive elements present are 
varied in quantity there is a change in the effect of the toxic 
substance on the growth of the organism. 
Resin determinations have been made on approximately 
450 series of pine blocks, the whole comprising about 3000 
samples which were placed in cultures of L. saepiaria. The 
reduction in weight of these blocks, after incubation for one 
year, varies considerably, but the results so far taken tend 
to show that the influence of resin on the decay by this fungus 
is exceedingly erratic. This will be reported in a second 
paper. 
ENZYME Activiry IN LENZITES SAEPIARIA 
Work on the enzyme activity of the wood-destroying fungi 
is comparatively meagre. This is especially the status of the 
cytolytic investigations. There are very few papers wholly 
devoted to enzymes of higher fungi. In 1895 Bourquelot and 
Hérissey investigated the enzymes from the juice of the sporo- 
phores of Polyporus sulphureus. The enzymes were precipi- 
tated with alcohol. Czapek, in 1899, found in natural infec- 
tions of Merulius lacrymans an active principle capable of 
liberating from lignin the substance which gives the lignin 
reactions in alcoholic extracts. This substance, which is dis- 
cussed more fully later in this paper, he called ‘‘hadromal,’’ 
and the enzyme capable of liberating it was called ‘‘had- 
гошаве.””. 
Two years later Kohnstamm (201) applied Buchner’s 
‘‘Dauerhefe’’ method to Ше sporophores and mycelium of 
Merulius lacrymans and Armillaria mellea. He obtained evi- 
dence of the presence in these fungi of diastatic, proteolytic, 
glucoside-splitting, and cellulose-hydrolyzing enzymes. Buller 
(206) tested out the juice expressed from the sporophores of 
Polyporus squamosus and obtained positive evidence of the 
