OcTOBER 9, 1902] 
NATURE 
587 
ascertained that this diminution was attended by a considerable 
formation of alcohol. Three parcels of forty peas were 
examined, weighing respectively 10, 17 and 27 grammes, and 
the experiments lasted six, twelve and twenty-seven days. He 
found the proportion of alcohol to the original weight of the 
peas was 2°34, 4°63 and 6°56 percent. As the peas were sub- 
merged, and so kept out of contact with air, it seems possible to 
suppose we have here again an effect of asphyxiation. Other 
experiments, however, make this view unsatisfactory. He 
germinated twenty peas at 22° C. for seven days under normal 
conditions, till their axes were about 14 inches long. He then 
covered them with water, in some cases leaving the terminal 
bud exposed to air. The development of the submerged plants 
stopped at once, and at the end of five days the liquid contained 
130 milligrammes of alcohol. The seedlings whose terminal 
buds were exposed to the air continued to grow without showing 
any disturbance. Mazé concludes that the alcohol produced 
was utilised by them in their growth, and suggests that it 
is a normal and necessary product of the digestion of carbo- 
hydrate material in seeds in course of development. 
He goes on to show that alcohol can be demonstrated to be 
present in plantlets that have germinated for forty-eight hours at 
23 C. under normal conditions. 
Another worker of great eminence who has found similar 
conditions to exist in normal vegetation is Berthelot. He put 
blades of wheat and leaves of the hazel in flasks, displaced the air 
by hydrogen, and distilled. In the case of the wheat he heated 
the flask to 94° C., in that of hazel he conducted the distillation 
by passing steam through the flask. In both he found the 
distillate contained alcohol. The quantity was not large, but 
still measurable ; from 1o kilos. of leaves he obtained 10 grammes 
of alcohol. 
Mazé claims to have found alcohol under normal conditions in 
the stems and leaves of the vine. 
Mazé finds, further, that the weight of a seedling of maize 
approximates at any moment during the early stages of germina- 
tion to half that lost by the reserve store in the endosperm. 
From his experiments, and those of the other authors alluded 
to, he concludes that alcohol is formed in the living cells of 
seeds at the expense of grape sugar by virtue of a normal 
diastasic process, which makes them approach yeast cells more 
closely than has been suggested by any of the experiments hitherto 
published. We may inquire further how far the evidence points 
to the probability that the molecule of sugar is split up in that 
way into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and that the alcohol is 
the nutritive part of the sugar molecule. Certainly Mazé’s 
experiments on the submerged seeds with the plumule exposed 
above the water are not inconsistent with that view. Duclaux has 
spoken more definitely still on this point, and has said that the 
alcohol formed becomes a true reserve material to be used for 
nutriment. 
We have, however, further evidence that to some plants, at 
all events, alcohol is a food. Laborde has published some 
researches conducted upon a fungus, Zwrotiopsis Gayont, which 
point unmistakably to this conclusion, He cultivated it in a 
solution containing only the mineral constituents of Rawlin’s 
fluid and a certain percentage of alcohol, usually from 4 to 
5 per cent. The plant grew well, forming little circular 
patches of mycelium, which enlarged radially as the growth 
progressed. The mycelium became very dense in the centre of 
the patches, and the fungus evidently thrived well. As it grew 
the alcohol slowly disappeared, the rate being about equal to 
that of sugar in a similar culture in which this substance re- 
placed the alcohol. The mycelium in some experiments was 
cultivated quite from the spores. Eurotiopsis is a fungus which 
has the power of setting up alcoholic fermentation in saccharine 
solutions. When cultivated in these, alcohol is accordingly 
produced, and subsequently used, but the growth of the mould 
is not so easy under these conditions as when the alcohol is sup- 
plied to it at the outset. 
Duclaux has shown that in the case of another fungus, the 
well-known Aspergillus niger, though alcohol kills it while it is 
in course of germination from the spore, it can utilise for nutri- 
tion 6°8 per cent. when it becomes adult, continuing to grow, 
and putting out aérial hyphz. Eurotiopsis is more pronounced 
in its liking for alcohol, for it thrives in a mixture containing 10 
per cent. ; evenif submerged entirely it continues to grow and 
flourish in an 8 per cent. solution. 
The peculiarity relates only to ethyl alcohol ; methy! alcohol 
will serve as a nutritive medium for onlya little time, sufficient 
NO. 1719, VOL. 66] 
only for the commencing development of the spores into a 
mycelium and disappearing very slowly from the culture fluid. 
The higher alcohols, propyl, butyl and amyl, not only give no 
nourishment, but are poisonous to spores. A very small trace 
of any of them can be used by the adult mould. 
Laborde claims to have established as the result of his in- 
vestigations that Eurotiopsis normally makes alcohol from the 
sugar to nourish itself with it, just as yeast makes invert sugar 
from cane sugar because it is the nutritive material it likes best. 
The enzyme zymase is present in the fungus and plays the part 
of an alimentary enzyme. Its consumption lasts twice as long 
as that of a corresponding weight of glucose; it can serve 
twice as long for the nutrition of the same weight of plant. 
These remarkable results lead us to the consideration of the 
mode in which the carbohydrates, and particularly the sugars, 
are assimilated by the plant. We have held the view that the 
sugar molecule is capable of entering with little ifany alteration 
into that of protoplasm. We have found no direct evidence 
bearing upon its fate. It is possible to detect sugar in the axis 
of a plant till quite near its growing point. Then the reaction 
ceases to be obtainable, and we know that assimilation is taking 
place. But we have still to investigate the steps, no very easy 
problem to undertake. May it possibly be that it is the alcohol 
moiety of the sugar which the protoplasm takes up, part of the 
carbon dioxide evolved by the growing organ being an expres- 
sion, not of respiration, but of a fermentation preliminary to 
assimilation ? 
But I feel I have dealt at sufficient length with this question. 
I pass, therefore, to consider briefly another nutrition problem 
of a rather different kind. The germination of seeds is a ques- 
tion that might be thought to have been fairly settled by the 
investigations of the latter half of the last century. We have 
come to the conception of the seed as fundamentally a young 
embryo lying quiescent within its testa, and provided with a 
store of nourishment deposited either within its own substance 
or lying round it in the tissues vaguely named endosperm or 
perisperm. The nourishment has been held to be practically 
ready for its use, needing only a certain amount of enzyme 
action to be applied to it to convert the food store from the 
reserve to the nutritive condition. We have recognised here 
starch, proteids and glucosides, and have ascertained that the 
embryo can furnish the appropriate enzymes for their digestion. 
Each reserve store has apparently been quite independent of the 
rest, and the embryo has had control of the whole. 
Certain considerations, however, lead us to the view that for 
albuminous seeds at any rate this mode of looking at the matter 
is no longer satisfactory. We may first ask how far the embryo 
is the controlling factor in the digestion. Putting the matter in 
another form, is the influence of the parent plant lost when a 
stable store of food has been provided for the offspring, and does 
it leave its utilisation entirely to the latter? Is the gametophyte 
prothallus merely to become a dead or inactive structure as soon 
as it has developed its young sporophyte, or may its influence 
extend for the longer period of germination? There are many 
reasons for thinking this is the case. Indeed, the view has been 
put forward by some observers at intervals for some years. Gris 
claimed to have shown it in 1864 ; but it was opposed by Sachs, 
who said that the enzymes which cause decompositions in the 
reserve materials are always formed in the young plant or embryo 
and are excreted by the latter into the endosperm. Some careful 
experiments on the point were conducted by Van Tieghem and 
were published by him in 1877. His work was carried out on 
the seeds of the castor-oil plant. Je deprived the seeds of their 
embryos and exposed them for some weeks on damp moss to a 
temperature of 25-30° C. After several days of this exposure, 
he found the isolated endosperms were growing considerably, 
and at the end of a month they had doubled their dimensions. 
In the interior of the cells he found the aleurone grains to be 
gradually dissolving, and the oily matter to be diminishing, 
though slowly. The dissolution extended throughout the mass 
of the endosperm, and was not especially prominent in the side 
that had been nearest to the cotyledons. He noted, too, that 
though starch did not normally appear in the germinating endo- 
sperm, under the condition of non-removal of the products of 
the decomposition, it did appear in the cells in the form of 
small grains, though not till after several days had elapsed. 
Van Tieghem also observed that the progress of the decomposi- 
tions could be arrested and the endosperms made to reassume a 
quiescent condition, and that then the aleurone grains again 
became formed, though in less quantity than before. 
