g6 Green . — On Vegetable Ferments . 
washed and dried, when it forms a greyish powder. This 
powder is largely soluble in water and is partly composed of 
the ferment. When an extract of it is allowed to act upon 
parenchyma-cells the results above described are soon to be 
seen, the ferment dissolving the middle lamella and gelatin- 
izing the cell- walls. None of these extracts produced any 
change in the parenchyma if they were boiled before the 
experiment. 
Marshall Ward is inclined to attribute the branching seen 
in these hyphal filaments just below their attachment, to the 
presence of the ferment. He thinks that it is caused by 
a local action or accumulation of the enzyme softening the 
wall of the hypha just below the apex, and the pressure 
within then causing protrusion and so growth. Indeed he 
thinks it possible that the apical growth of the hypha may be 
attributed to a similar condition. 
A similar cellulose-dissolving enzyme, or cytohydrolyst, 
has been discovered by Brown and Morris in the germinating 
barley-grain 1 . During germination the cells underlying the 
scutellum undergo a softening and partial dissolution of their 
walls, becoming isolated from each other before their starchy 
contents are attacked by the diastase. The cell-walls swell 
and the several lamellae partially separate, showing marked 
stratification. The lamellae gradually dissolve, the middle 
lamella being the most resistant. Ultimately the wall under- 
goes fragmentation and disappears. It is not till after a 
certain amount of this action has taken place that the starch- 
grains in the cells are attacked, but in the meantime newly 
formed starch-grains make their appearance in the cells 
of the scutellum part of whose function is absorptive. The 
course of events appears to be the transformation of the 
cellulose into some carbohydrate capable of dialysis, probably 
some form of sugar, the absorption of this by the scutellum, 
and the formation of the transitory starch at its expense. 
The granular character of the protoplasm of the cells of 
the epithelium of the scutellum has already been referred to 
1 op. cit. 
