396 GAISER: CRYSTALS IN THE SPADIX OF ANTHURIUM 
‘Johow (7) studied members of the families Aroidaceae, 
Commelinaceae, Amaryllidaceae, Iridaceae, and Orchidaceae, 
with the object of determining whether nuclei or any protoplasmic 
body were present in mature tissue cells. He worked with 
fresh material, using staining reagents to differentiate the cell 
content. In such cases as the raphide cells, where it was impos- 
sible to investigate sections of living tissue because the rows of 
sacs could not be kept intact for their whole length, he had 
recourse to alcoholic material, of which single cells were isolated 
by maceration methods and then stained. Johow reached the 
conclusion that in all secretory reservoirs observed by him, 
including slime-containing raphide sacs, drusen cells, latex- 
containing sacs, tannin sacs and tannin-containing septate 
latex tubes, protoplasm and nucleus were regularly present. 
Of the aroids he observed Anthurium sagittatum and Philodendron 
cordifolium and found in older stems and leaf petioles the char- 
acteristic Rosanoff crystals. He describes them as filling almost 
entirely the lumen of the cell, being connected by cellulose 
strands to the wall and enclosed by a cellulose membrane. As 
Rosanoff had observed, he too found the unchanged nucleus 
with a nucleolus. He points out that the nucleus lies in a well 
developed primordial utricle along the cell wall and not adjacent 
to the crystal. 
Kohl (8), also working in the petiole of Anthurium Scher- 
zerianum, found nuclei lying in the cytoplasm of the crystal 
cells and confirmed Rosanoff’s findings as to the presence of a 
cellulose sheath about the crystals (see also Meyer, 10, p. 381) 
but the same method of treatment by nitric acid was employed. 
I have sections of an Anthurium petiole which give data bearing 
on the problem of the cellulose sheath on which I shall report 
in a later paper. 
Kohl is very clear on the question here involved as to the 
presence of the nucleus in the primordial utricle and outside the 
crystal group. Johow’s criticism of the text-books of Sachs (18) 
and De Bary (1) for assuming that there are no other solid 
bodies in a crystal-containing cell is entirely justified. 
As for the nucleus in Anthurium grande, it persists intact in 
the cell after the crystal has become a conspicuous stellate 
structure in a vacuole. When the size of the crystal is such as 
to occupy almost the entire lumen of the cell the nucleus is 
