Notes on Recent Literature. 
170 
NOI ES ON RECENT LITERATURE. 
CHONDRIOSOMES (MITOCHONDRIA) AND THEIR 
SIGNIFICANCE. 
By F. Cavers. 
(continued from p. 106). 
Criticisms of the Chondriosome Origin of Chromatophores. 
W E have seen that the work of Lewitsky and of Pensa, and 
later that of Forenbacher and of Guillermond, led these 
writers to conclude that chromatophores (leucoplasts, chloroplasts, 
chromoplasts) in flowering plants arise by morphological and 
chemical processes of transformation from chondriosomes which 
are homologous with those described for animal cells and which in 
turn arise by division of pre-existing chondriosomes in the cells of 
embryonic tissues and may be traced back to the oosphere itself. 
Since this conclusion is, at first glance at least, violently opposed 
to the view associated with the names of Schimper and Meyer— 
that chromatophores always arise by division of pre-existent 
chromatophores—it is natural that it should not long go 
unchallenged. Meyer (1911) criticised Lewitsky’s work on various 
grounds, though his criticism strikes one as consisting mainly in a 
refusal to believe that anything new remains to be discovered in 
vegetable cytology and a declaration that the last word regarding 
the development of chromatophores was said by himself and 
Schimper about thirty years ago. Meyer pointed out that if the 
Lewitsky-Pensa view is correct we have a discovery of something 
entirely new in the plant cell, in which hitherto there have been 
distinguished (1) protoplastic structures which alone multiply by 
division, namely, the nucleus and the chromatophores (2) allo- 
plasmatic structures which arise by alteration of the normal 
cytoplasm, such as flagella, hautschicht, vacuolar membranes, and 
(3) ergastic structures which arise de novo, such as starch grains 
and calcium oxalate crystals; to these must now be added, 
according to Pensa and Lewitsky, (4) chromatophores which arise 
from special cell-organs not belonging to the normal cytoplasm and 
differing morphologically and physiologically from the chromato¬ 
phores themselves. He also claimed that there is no special 
method of staining which will distinguish any one kind of proto¬ 
plasmatic or alloplasmatic structure from another, and that 
conversely the same stain reaction may be given by totally different 
cell structures, hence we have no right to assume that all structures 
stained by the Benda-Meves method are necessarily morphologically 
and physiologically similar. Finally he demanded more definite 
proofs that chondriosomes can be distinguished from small 
chromatophores and that the actual transformation of the former 
into the latter can be actually seen directly in the living cell, as for 
instance in filamentous Algae, 
