CELLULOSE 



PART I 



THE TYPICAL CELLULOSE AND THE 

 CELLULOSE GROUP 1 



CELLULOSE is the predominating constituent of plant tissues, 

 and may be shortly described as the structural basis of the 

 vegetable world. The ordinary flowering plant is a complex 

 structure, and its several parts are also complex that is, are 

 made up of cells. These cells exhibit an infinite variety of 

 form, the main lines of differentiation necessarily conforming 

 with variations in function. The growing cell is, of course, 

 nitrogenous, the living functions depending upon its proto- 

 plasmic contents. What we have to deal with, however, is 

 the cell, less the cell-contents of whatever kind, whether 

 'organic' that is, concerned in the assimilating or other 

 living functions of the cell or of the nature of by-products 

 of metabolism excreted or thrown off from the main stream 

 of matter undergoing elaboration into the essential structures 

 of the plant. We have to deal, in fact, with the cell-wall 

 or envelope, to which the term cel/ulose has been applied as 

 to a chemical individual. There are, as might be expected, a 

 great many varieties of cellulose, and the term must be taken 

 as denoting a chemical group. The celluloses, taken as a 

 1 Sometimes abbreviated to the short title * Cellulose.' 



B 



