Newcombe . — Cellulose- Enzymes. 7 1 
reported by Griiss 1 as taking place after two to three months’ 
action of Barley- extract on Date-endosperm. The whole 
surface of the section was corroded, and the exposed walls 
frayed out. More deeply lying walls showed longitudinal, 
open channels. All of the walls had become hyaline. A sub- 
sequent examination two weeks afterward showed, by a 
comparison of camera-outlines, that the whole section had 
become considerably smaller. The dissolved walls had left 
no trace of a remnant, and therefore the whole of the wall is 
capable of solution by the ferment. 
As noted elsewhere, proper controls showed that this 
solution of the endosperm was due neither to the hydro- 
chloric acid nor to the chloroform. 
F. Extracts of Cotyledons of Pisum sativum 
and Fagopyrum esculentum. 
From the seedlings of the Pea and the Buckwheat, extracts 
were made as from the plants heretofore described, and 
strong solutions of these extracts were tested on Wheat- 
starch-grains, and on the membranes of the Barley-endos- 
perm. Both extracts were found to exert a weak solvent 
power on the cell-walls as well as on the starch-grains. The 
strongest solution obtainable from either plant was not as 
active either on starch or on membranes as a moderately 
strong solution of the Barley-malt-extract. 
III. Cytase or Diastase? 
If in the present unsatisfactory condition of our knowledge 
of ferments, diastase be regarded as an enzyme whose chief 
characteristic is its ability to dissolve starch, then the 
following pages will show that not all of the extracts here 
treated as capable of dissolving reserve cellulose can be 
denominated diastase , though all of the cellulose-enzymes so 
far discovered show more or less solvent action on starch. 
If some of them cannot be regarded as diastase, they may be 
1 Studien iiber Reservecellulose : Bot. Centrlbt., lxx (1897), 242. 
