66 Newcomhe— Cellulose- Enzymes. 
hydrochloric acid, and to each vial one or two drops of 
chloroform were given. Probably not one-half of any pre- 
cipitate dissolved in the small amount of liquid. 
The extract of petioles proved itself but slightly, if at all, 
active on the endosperm-walls of the Barley-grain, and was 
not used for farther experiment. 
The unprecipitated extract of cotyledons was tested in its 
action on hemicellulose by making preparations of Barley- 
endosperm on slides as described before for other ferments. 
In some cases the sections were brushed under water till 
most of the starch was removed ; in other cases the sections 
were immersed for twenty-four hours in dilute saliva, thus 
removing all their starch. The slide-preparations were all 
kept in an oven at 33 0 , in chloroform-vapour. The walls 
of the starch-bearing cells showed themselves in all cases 
reduced in twenty-four hours to one-third their first thickness. 
The middle lamella, however, dissolved slowly. I find in my 
notes the statement that an observation made sixty-seven 
hours after the beginning showed no remains of the middle 
lamella. How much sooner it disappeared I cannot say, 
certainly in not less than forty-eight hours after the 
beginning. 
The precipitated and redissolved extract of cotyledons 
showed itself, in the solution used, more active upon the 
Barley-endosperm-walls than was the extract just described. 
In slide-preparations like those previously described, the walls 
of the starch-bearing cells of the Barley-endosperm, at 33 0 
temperature, were reduced to a very thin middle lamella in 
twelve to twenty hours ; the middle lamella in general 
disappeared within forty-eight hours from the beginning ; 
and the aleurone-cell-walls became hyaline in a thin section 
within three to four days. We have therefore in this solution 
a Date-ferment whose action upon the hemicellulose of the 
Barley-endosperm shows the same energy as the extract 
of the Barley-malt and of Aspergillus Oryzae. Its method 
of solution of the Barley-walls is, however, that of the Barley- 
ferment, not that of the Aspergillus. It dissolves first a strip 
