i H 
Green. — On Vegetable Ferments . 
mg with dilute acids. From the endosperm of germinating 
seeds, the enzyme can be extracted by either salt-solution or 
glycerine. It is associated with the trypsin already mentioned, 
as well as with another ferment to be described presently. 
The enzyme is often present in good quantity, or it has very 
energetic powers, a glycerine-extract in one experiment curd- 
ling two and a half times its volume of milk in five minutes. 
The salt-solution extract acts much more slowly, neutral salt 
being a hindrance to rennet, as it is to trypsin. Different seeds, 
however, contain very varying quantities of the enzyme. 
In the germinating lupin-seed, rennet exists side by side 
with trypsin, but there is much less of it present. 
The rennet from Ricinus is capable of acting in either acid, 
neutral, or alkaline solutions. Too much acidity obscures the 
action, as the acid itself tends to throw down the casein of the 
milk. 
The so-called 4 Naras 5 plant of South Africa 1 ( Acanthosicyos 
horrida) also contains rennet in the pericarp, in the pulp, and 
in the expressed juice, of its ripe fruit. It differs from the 
examples just quoted in not having any in the seeds. The 
enzyme in Naras is destroyed by boiling, but it will remain 
for an almost indefinite time in the dried rind. It differs 
from most ferments, according to Marloth, in being soluble in 
alcohol of 6o per cent, strength. 
Chittenden’s proteohydrolytic enzyme in the pine-apple is 
also associated with a rennet-ferment 2 . 
Glyceride-Enzymes. 
The transformations undergone by oils on the germination of 
the seeds containing them have only recently been shown to be 
the work of an enzyme. In 1871 Muntz 3 showed that during 
germination bodies make their appearance that are such as 
would result from a splitting up of the oil, and suggested that 
the embryo acts as a ferment and provokes the decomposition. 
Schiitzenberger 4 in 1875, from observations on seeds crushed 
1 Nature, July 19, 1888, p. 275. 
3 Muntz, Annales de Chimie, ser. 4, vol. XXII, 1871, 
2 loc. cit. 
1 op. cit. 
