196 THE PHENOMENON OF 



of many Cryptogamia also include chlorophyll before 

 they are mature, but lose the chlorophyll, and become 

 yellow, brown or red,* through formation of oil, or 

 white,! through formation of starch, in ripening; till at 

 length the chlorophyll reappears in the germination. 

 Chlorophyll, however, this green colouring matter of 

 plants, so characteristic of the Vegetable kingdom in its 

 total manifestation, so intimately connected with the 

 independent! vegetative process, is one of the vegetable 

 substances which has hitherto been least subjected to 

 accurate investigation, in reference to its chemical con- 

 ditions, its genetic connection with other substances of 

 the cell-contents, and its transformations ; nay even in 

 reference to the shapes in which it occurs, either alone or 

 combined with other substances, in the cell, so that 

 we are compelled to rest satisfied with these brief 

 indications. 



We will trace more in detail the play of formation, 

 solution, and reformation in the contents of the cell, in 

 the phenomena exhibited by starch. Schleiden calls 

 starch the most widely diffused substance in the Vegetable 

 kingdom, saying that he is not acquainted with a single 

 plant which does not contain more or less starch at some 

 season or other, at all events at the period of the rest of 

 vegetation.! This particular occurrence of starch at the 

 period of resting vegetation, in the organs in which the 

 plant preserves its life for a future season of vegetation, 



* Vide the spores of Vaucheria, Spirogyra, (Edogonium, Bulboch&te, &c. 

 According to Mohl, the spores of Jungermannia contain chlorophyll in 

 youth (correct, A. H.). In Chlamidococcus pluvialis, the green colour 

 vanishes entirely in the resting generation (the seed-cells, spores) which 

 become reddish-brown or bright red ; the active generations (gonidia), on the 

 contrary, gradually become green again ; (see farther on.) 



t Thus in the spores of Characese. 



J It is absent, as is well known, from most parasitical plants, Crypto- 

 gamia as well as Phanerogamia. 



(On the complex chemical conditions of chlorophyll ; See Morot, ' Ann. 

 des Sc. nat.,' 3me ser., Bot., torn, xiii, p. 160. A. H.) 



|| ' Gruudziige,' 2te Aufg. 1, p. 180, ('Principles,' p. 18.) Schleiden here 

 forgets to mention the Fungi, in which, as in the fungoid Phanerogamic 

 parasites, starch-formation appears to be absent. In the Phycochromiferous 



