MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 63 



in the Johnston Bio-Chemical Laboratory at the University, 

 Liverpool. The list of workers includes Professor B. Moore, 

 Mr. E. S. Edie, Mr. E. Whitley, Dr. A. Adams, Mr. W. H. Evans, 

 Dr. E. B. R. Prideaux, Mr. G. A. Herdman and Mr. A. Webster. 



" (I.) The results of the first series of researches were 

 published in two papers in the Bio-Chemical Journal, Vol. VII., 

 No. 2, March, 1913 ; and the conclusions from the work, which 

 extended over a period of more than a year, may be summarised 

 as follows : — 



" (1.) Both male and female reproductive glands in Echino- 

 derms contain large amounts of reserve metabolic products, 

 such as glycogen, fats and lecithides. 



" (2.) These reserves are only slowly used up, if at all, 

 when the animal is deprived of food. 



" (3.) In a reproductive gland richly stored with glycogen 

 no sugar formation occurs on keeping after death, even in a 

 period of two days, showing that no ferment such as is found 

 in the mammalian liver can be present. 



" (4.) The amount of food consumed is much greater than 

 that required to cover the daily metabolic wants of the animal, 

 and is largely stored in the reproductive glands during the 

 resting period, but it has not yet been possible to trace the 

 utilisation of this at the active reproductive season. 



" (5.) The fatty constituents of the reproductive organs of 

 the Echinoderm are highly unsaturated, and resemble in this 

 respect the liver oils of mammals. 



" The second paper of this series deals, for the first time, 

 with the osmotic properties of the interesting class of histones 

 (found peculiarly in reproductive organs), and shows that a 

 definite osmotic pressure is obtained indicating a solution- 

 aggregate with a molecular weight lying between 8,000 and 

 9,000. This shows that the histones lie, in molecular com- 

 plexity, between other acidic proteins such as caseinogen, and 

 the coagulable proteins present in the serum and egg-albumen. 



