260 DR. C. A. MAC MUNN ON ENTEROCHLOROPHYLL, AND ALLIED PIGMENTS. 
Professor Stokes, # FREMY,t Sorby,| Kraus, § and latterl}' Hansen [| and others mav 
all be quoted as authorities in support of the view that plant chlorophyll is composed of 
more than one constituent. Pringsheim maintains that Fremy’s view : namely that 
the constituents exist side by side in chlorophyll, is erroneous, and holds that they are 
only products of decomposition.H Which of these views is right it is impossible to say 
with our present knowledge. Still we know that chlorophyll consists of two or more 
constituents united together in some way. 
Spongilla contains a similar chlorophyll, and this is built up by the animal itself, a 
comparison of the measurements in this paper, and of spectra 1, 7, and 15, Chart II., 
proves this beyond all doubt. In Cantharides ## an animal chlorophyll also exists, 
but I have not saponified it; and in all the chlorophyll-containing animals enume¬ 
rated in Sachs’s ‘ Botany,’ by Professor Lankester, with one or two exceptions, 
e.g , Idotea and Bonellia, I have no doubt a similar chlorophyll exists. In Anthea 
cereus it is due to symbiotic algte. 
A comparison of the bands of enterochlorophy 11 as they are shown in Chart I., with 
those of vegetable chlorophyll in Chart II., shows a difference with regard to the bands 
in the violet half of the spectrum, and on running the eye down along the F line one 
sees that the bands belonging to the yellow constituent are joined in some cases, in others 
placed close together, and in some cases only one band is present, which replaces 
the other two. After saponifying the same result is arrived at. The yellow con¬ 
stituent of the enterochlorophyll, while generally giving in the solid state the colour 
reactions of Schwalbe and Capranica, shows different hands to those of vegetable 
“ chlorophyll yellow ” ( = xanthophyll). 
I do not think that Hansen’s “ chlorophyll green” is a body which exists as such 
in chlorophyll, because the examination of its solutions after saponification reveals a 
wide difference in the position of the bands of the ‘‘chlorophyll green,” compared with 
those belonging to the red half of the spectrum in the original chlorophyll solution. 
What its relationship may be to the greenish-white body crystallizing in four-sided 
plates, and appearing red by transmitted light, which Hoppe -SEYLERtt isolated from 
grass, is doubtful, or what to the other substance isolated by him crystallizing in 
needles, dark green by reflected and brown by transmitted light, and named chloro- 
* Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. 13 (1863-4), p. 144. Burnett, “Lectures on Light,” 2nd course, pp. 8 and 9. 
f ‘ Comptes Rendus,’ tome 50 (1860), p. 405; tome 61 (1865), p. 180. Journ. fur prakt. Chem., band 
87 (1862), p. 319. 
X Loc. cit. 
§ Loc. cit. 
|| Loc. cit. 
Chem. Centralblatt, 1880, pp. 299, 316, 331; also Konrad, ‘ Flora,’ 1872, p. 396. 
** See Brit. Assoc. Reports, 1883. I have recently examined again a solution obtained by digesting 
the elytrce only in ether containing alcohol and find that chlorophyll is present. 
f| ‘ Berichte der deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft,’ Jahrg. 12 (1879), p. 1555; Jahrg. 13 (1880), 
p. 1244. 
