[Vou. 2 
788 ANNALS OF THE MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN 
coagulum either came to the top or settled to the bottom of 
the vessel—if to the top, it was usually very much aggregated 
and little difficulty was experienced in the filtering, if to the 
bottom, it was generally in a very finely divided condition and 
unless care was exercised in the decantation of the super- 
natant liquid the pores of the filter soon became clogged, re- 
sulting in extremely slow filtration. Time was therefore given 
for a complete settling out (15 minutes to half an hour sufficed) 
and all the clear fluid filtered off before the coagulum reached 
the filter paper. 
A homogeneous diffusion of the precipitate was made by 
placing the filter paper with the attached coagulum in a known 
volume of distilled water. The paper could soon be removed 
without loss of material, and the weight of the original fresh 
or dry tissue represented by an aliquot portion of the solu- 
tion easily reckoned. If the precipitate were not required im- 
mediately, it was dried on a filter paper at room temperature 
and stored in stoppered jars. In none of the experiments 
was the enzyme material purified further. 
When dissolved in water, the precipitates behaved differ- 
ently. Some, especially those where much slime had been 
noticed in the extraction, gave an extremely viscous suspen- 
sion, others a suspension of low viscosity. In Laminaria and 
Chondrus, where the extract had been quite viscous and slimy, 
the protein was caught up in the precipitated slime in such a 
way as to make the freeing of it practically impossible. The 
precipitate in these cases was very large and when diffused 
in water gave a suspension difficult to handle. Rhodymenia, 
Ceramuum, and Enteromorpha, on the other hand, gave a 
finely divided precipitate that produced no viscosity. 
Glassware, antiseptics, solutions, etc.—With few exceptions, 
the various experiments were set up in 125 cc. Erlenmeyer 
flasks. All glassware was thoroughly cleaned with strong 
soap and then with chromic-sulphuric cleaning mixture, after 
which it was rinsed several times with tap and distilled water. 
Solutions were made up from either Merck’s or Kahlbaum’s 
‘‘ouarantiert’’ chemicals. 
