O'Brien . — The Proteids of Wheat. 1 8 1 
Vines 26 , 31 (1878-80) added the albumoses, which, as well as 
globulins, he investigated in the aleuron-grains of many seeds. 
The methods and results of Hoppe-Seyler and his school 
were at first severely criticised by Ritthausen 24 , who noticing 
only a preliminary account of Weyl’s paper, charged him with 
insufficient observations, and these on a part only of the 
proteid of the seed. For as the vegetable caseins are in- 
soluble in salt-solution, Weyl must, he contends, have worked 
only with the substances in the wash-fluids. 
The fuller publication of the researches of Weyl left no 
ground for this argument; and in 1878 Barbieri 25 made the 
important announcement that the substances obtained by the 
methods of Ritthausen and of Weyl are identical in ultimate 
chemical composition. His work was a careful comparison of 
different analyses of the proteid of pumpkin seeds, which may 
be described as casein or vitellin, according to its method of 
preparation. 
This conclusion was accepted by Ritthausen, and both 
methods were adopted by him in his later investigation 27 on 
the proteids of oily seeds. He however rejected the idea that 
there was any need to change his original nomenclature. 
The views of Hoppe-Seyler and his principles of classifica- 
tion seem now universally accepted, at least such is the case 
in England, where they are followed by, among others, 
Foster, Haliburton, Sheridan Lea, Vines, Green, and Martin. 
The task of modern botanists is thus simplified ; such a 
scheme of classification being recognised, their work is to 
bring into line with it all the proteids newly investigated 
or already described. This is gradually being done for one 
substance after another ; but the attempts to co-ordinate the 
proteids of gluten with other vegetable proteids hardly seem 
as yet to have been successful. And if I am unable to assign 
them to their true position, it may not be quite without use to 
have indicated that this is still to be done. 
An investigation, in 1880, of the origin of gluten was under- 
taken by Weyl 28 , in conjunction with Bischoff, which does not 
seem to have been so successful as his former work. It led 
