204 



U. SUZUKI. 



developed, we can hardly find a single starch grain under the 

 same treatment. 



The importance of reserve materials in the first stages of 

 development is self-evident, and hardly needs an explanation, 

 since the youngest buds can only develop by the aid of reserve 

 materials, and even the green leaves, in their youngest stages, 

 have very little assimilative faculty and must chiefly rely upon 

 reserve materials until they become tolerably large. No plants 

 can develop their leaves without the aid of reserve materials 

 But the precise extent to which the mulberry stands in need of 

 reserve materials for proper development, is still open to ques- 

 tion and must be discussed fully. There is no doubt that differ- 

 ent plants needs different quantities of reserve materials, and if a 

 plant contains a large quantity of reserve materials, it shows 

 that the plant wants so much until it becomes able to assimilate 

 the necessary nutriments from outside. Otherwise the plant 

 would never keep in store an unnecessarily large amount of 

 reserve materials. 



As already shown in the preceding tables, a considerable 

 amount of reserve materials is stored up in the stems and roots 

 of the mulberry, the greater part of which is consumed during 

 the development of the leaves ; hence there is no doubt that this 

 plant has need of a large amount of reserve materials, and it may 

 naturally be expected that when the reserve materials are in- 

 sufficient, the plant can not attain normal development. It is 

 an evident fact that an enormous quantity of reserve materials 

 moves toward the growing points of the buds and roots to build 

 up new cells, and a still larger quantity of fats and carbohy- 

 drates must be consumed there by the energetic respiration 

 which commences long before the new leaves are unfolded. 

 The necessity of reserve materials will be the greater the quicker 

 the development of young leaves, and the nutriments absorbed by 

 the roots must be insufficient to meet the demand, as the 

 absorptive power of the roots depends greatly upon the intensity 

 of transpiration ; and it may naturally be expected that in the 

 first stages of development, when the leaves are very small the 

 absorption of the nutriments must be very slow and thus makes 

 the necessity of reserve materials still more urgent. 



According to some recent investigations, proteids can be 

 formed from amido-compounds or other inorganic nitrogen com- 



