Conditions of its Production in the Plant. 319 



Of all known histological formations they remind us most 

 (and, again, especially the thicker and twisted forms) of the 

 bacillar forms of many so-called wax coatings of leaves, which, 

 as is well known, consist of diverse mixtures of substances 

 poor in oxygen. And as from their conditions of occurrence 

 and solubility they are evidently organic formations which 

 appear to belong to a group of proximate constituents of the 

 plant allied to these wax bacilli, and also visibly proceed from 

 a common oleaginous parent substance, one may easily sup- 

 pose that they consist of a mixture of resin and essential oil, 

 such as occurs not unfrequently in vegetable tissues. The 

 consistency, the limitation, the solubility, and difficult mobility 

 of the separating drops more nearly resemble essential than 

 fatty oils. 



By the absence of the pure drop-form, and still more by the 

 directly recognizable processes of conversion of the surface 

 into multifarious structures of indistinctly crystalline texture, 

 these imperfectly fluid products of separation produce of them- 

 selves the impression of a mixture of solid and fluid sub- 

 stances, or rather of a kind of mother liquor of a separating 

 solid compound, whilst, at the same time, they give rise to the 

 idea of an essential oil in process of resinization. Further, 

 this microscopical character agrees with the behaviour to all 

 known solvents of resins and oils. 



All the forms under which these segregations make their 

 appearance, the irregularly limited drops, the crystalline scales, 

 needles, filaments, &c, are insoluble in water, in saline solu- 

 tions, and in dilute mineral and organic acids ; but they dis- 

 solve readily and completely in ether, benzole, sulphide of 

 carbon, and essential oils, and also in absolute or even in 

 moderately dilute alcohol, although frequently only after a 

 considerable time, and with more or less difficulty. 



The constituents of which this hypochlorin mixture con- 

 sists have not previously been distinguished in the funda- 

 mental substance of the chlorophyll-bodies, with the exception 

 of the colouring-matter which they contain. Nothing espe- 

 cially has ever yet been known of a body with the properties 

 of hypochlorin and its peculiar forms. The deep coloration, 

 however, of the drops and needles might lead many to sus- 

 pect (as I have found during the demonstration of these for- 

 mations) that the separated drops in their whole mass consist 

 only of the colouring-matter of the chlorophyll, which, being 

 separated from the fundamental substance by the hydrochloric 

 acid, becomes solidified or crystallizes in the form of needles 

 and filaments. 



But this is not the case. That the colour of the separated 



22* 



