[VoL. 3 
496 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 
in January and March, liquefied gelatin at the rate of 1 mm. 
per day for 30 days. There was the same action on fibrin as 
related above for Merulius lacrymans. 
Vines (’03) found by allowing crushed sporophoral tissue 
of Agaricus campestris to act on fibrin for 22 hours that there 
was a complete digestion to amino acids, i.e., the tissue is able 
to peptonize fibrin and digest the peptones. Delezenne and 
Mouton (708, '03*), a little later in the same year, secured 
widely different results. From the dried fruiting bodies of 
Agaricus campestris, Amanita muscaria, A. citrina, and 
Hypholoma fasciculare they made extracts with 0.8 per cent 
sodium chloride, using chloroform or toluol as antisepties. 
The extracts thus prepared from all of these species converted 
peptone to amino acids, digested gelatin and casein, but would 
not peptonize fibrin. These results of Delezenne and Mouton 
seemed so contradictory to the observations of previous 
workers that Vines (204) made further experiments to test 
their accuracy. 
For this work the ground pulp of the sporophores of 
Agaricus campestris, with the lamellae removed, was used. 
Providing the sporophores were mature the digestion of fibrin 
was evident. However, when a watery extract of the pilei 
was used the results were less certain, but in other experi- 
ments Vines found that extraets made with 2 per cent sodium 
chloride from fresh and dried sporophores actively digested 
fibrin in 1 per cent toluol or 0.2 per cent hydrocyanie acid. 
Sinee he found that boiled fibrin was not digested by these 
extraets, he suggests that the negative results of Delezenne 
and Mouton must be due to this error. Thus the extracts of 
A. campestris, prepared by Vines, contained an enzyme cap- 
able of peptonizing fibrin and converting the peptones and 
albumoses to amino acids. From this he concludes that there 
are two distinct proteases present, the one trypsin, the other 
erepsin. 
Buller, in 1906, confirmed the results obtained by Kohn- 
stamm in 1901 on the presence of proteases in the sporophores 
of P. squamosus. Kikkoji ('07) demonstrated the presence 
