146 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [SEPTEMBER 
the neutral fats sustained this loss. The respiration occurring 
during the after-ripening period amounted to only 2 per cent, while 
during the seedling period it amounted to about 5 per cent of the 
total dry weight. This small amount of material used by the 
respiration compared with the large amounts of formative, storage, 
and structural material, high in oxygen content, made from the 
apparently small amounts of fats, low in oxygen content, will easily 
account for the low respiratory quotient reported in an earlier 
paper (17) for these seeds during germination. 
The phosphatides more than doubled during the after-ripening 
process. Glycerine and fatty acids were supplied by the hydrolysis 
of fats, while phosphoric acid and nitrogen-containing complex were 
probably derived from inorganic phosphorus and the protein 
hydrolysis which accompanied the after-ripening. A slight decrease 
in the amount of phosphatides occurred during seedling develop- 
ment. This decrease could represent the phosphoric acid necessary 
for the formation of the nucleic acid, which was constructed at 
this period. 
The acid value of the ether extract increased during both after- 
ripening and seedling development. The iodine number decreased, 
while the saponification increased slightly without a marked 
appearance of carbohydrates. Such a condition would probably 
accompany the breaking up of long carbon chains into shorter 
chained compounds. The increased fall in the iodine number 
during the seedling development was due perhaps to the more 
rapid transformation of unsaturated fatty acids to carbohydrates 
(x0). This carbohydrate accumulation during seedling develop- 
ment amounted to 20 per cent (tables III and IV). The saponifi- 
cation number reached a minimum value for the seedlings, 
indicating a large percentage of long chained fatty acids. This is 
accounted for by the large percentage of phosphatides in the 
seedling lipoids. It appears that these values change materially 
in the same tissues with different stages of development. 
Dry seed and after-ripened seed lipoids were made to take up 
respectively 9.9 and 11.1 per cent of increased weight due to prob- 
able oxygen absorbed by artificial oxidation. There was a slight 
increase in the reducing power of the lipoids during after-ripening. 
