TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 533 
Lankester has pointed’ out, are in some cases attended with difficulty. In the 
instances about to be brought forward the microscopic and physiological proofs are 
incapable of being applied. The former has, it appears to the writer, too much 
importance attached to it, as chlorophyll in plants may occur evenly diffused 
throughout the cell, dissolved in the cell-contents. 
Change to a green colour on treatment with sulphuric acid, which has been 
observed in cases of vegetables, is no proof of the presence of a chlorophyll-like 
body, as the writer has seen this reaction take place in sea-anemones, in whose 
bodies no chlorophyll was present. 
Without accepting Sorby’s or Kraus’s views, the name chlorophyll is here 
applied to that colouring matter, or mixture of colouring matters, which can be 
obtained from a green leaf by means of alcohol or alcohol and ether. And the 
proof of the identity of animal and vegetable chlorophyll is based on the 
coincidence of the bands of an alcohol, ether, or chloroform solution of animal and 
vegetable chlorophyll respectively, as well as on the coincidence of their bands on 
the addition of the same reagent. 
The presence of the colouring matter which the writer has named ‘ entero- 
chlorophyll’ ? in the appendages of the enteron of various invertebrates was then 
referred to, and it was shown that it is probably synthetically built up, for the 
following reasons :— 
(1) It can be detected in the bile and alcohol-extract of the livers of snails 
after they have fasted for nine months. 
(2) It is as abundant in the liver, or other appendage of the enteron, of an 
animal feeding on flesh. 
(3) Its spectrum is constant in animals feeding on vegetables which give 
different spectra when examined in solution. 
(4) Itis not accompanied by other vegetable products, such as starch or cellulose, 
as it ought to be if food-chlorophyll. 
(5) It is present in many cases in the form of chlorophyll as such, not in that 
of decomposed chlorophyll. 
With regard to the possibility of symbiosis being the cause of the presence of 
chlorophyll, it was shown that although in some cases, e.g., liver of Helix aspersa, 
Limar flavus, Arion ater, bodies resembling unicellular algee are present, yet the 
chlorophyll cannot be due to them, since alcohol fails to extract their colour. 
Moreover, enterochlorophyll is abundantly present when no such bodies exist, e.g. 
liver of Anodonta, Mytilus, Ostrea, &c. Besides, starch ought to be present if 
unicellular algze existed in those situations, which is not the case, as no reaction 
can be developed with iodine even after prolonged maceration of sections of inver- 
tebrate livers (fresh frozen) in alcohol and caustic potash. In addition to observa- 
tions on enterochlorophyll the writer further called attention to the fact that 
chlorophyll may appear to be present in an animal when it is really due to the 
chlorophyll of its food, e.g. in green larvee, for in the latter case on removing the 
intestinal contents the green colour and the band in red both disappear. 
But in cantharides the presence of chlorophyll can be demonstrated in various 
extracts of the wing-cases, and here it must be a synthetic production of the 
animal. 
Pocklington first observed chlorophyll in cantharides in 1873, and the writer 
has further extended his observations. It can be shown that solutions of chloro- 
phyll obtained by digesting the above-mentioned and other parts of the bodies of 
these beetles in ether, alcohol, and chloroform give the same absorption bands as 
similar solutions of vegetable chlorophyll, and the bands are altered in the same 
manner as those of a similar solution of vegetable chlorophyll, on adding the same 
reagent, e.g. nitric acid. Here at all events we have an example of the occurrence 
of chlorophyll in an animal where it cannot be due directly to the food, and cer- 
tainly is not due to symbiosis. 
With regard to functions, chlorophyll cannot be of much use in respiration, 
1 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, vol. xxii. p. 229. 
2 Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 226, 1883. 
