40 
MR. J. R, GREER ON THE CHANGES IN THE PROTEIDS 
and traced out step by step. The resumption of the arrested development, under the 
conditions of moisture and of temperature which we call favourable to germination, 
involves intricate metabolic processes in which the different materials that have been 
stored are all separately concerned, each group of bodies being transformed into nearly 
related ones which are adapted for the new conditions of life. Instead of the resting 
forms of proteids, carbohydrates, &c., which are not diffusible and hence cannot pass 
from cell to cell and so traverse the plant, we have new forms which can readily 
travel to those points where growth is proceeding and new cells are being formed, and 
hence plastic material is required. The details of these transformations are in many 
cases still obscure, though some facts have been ascertained which throw light upon 
the nature of some of the chemical processes. In the case of the starch, which is so 
constant a constituent in seeds, it has been proved that the formation of sugar takes 
place from it by the agency of a ferment, exactly as it does in the corresponding pro¬ 
cess in the animal economy. From almost any seed a so-called diastatic ferment can 
be obtained, and so constant is the occurrence of the latter body in vegetable organisms 
that it can be prepared from almost any part of plants. From analogy it would seem 
probable that the proteolytic changes noticeable would have a similar cause, and that 
from seeds in which large quantities of reserve proteids are stored evidence of such a 
body could be obtained. 
Other seeds are noticeable in connection with the large store of cellulose which they 
contain in their endosperm cell-walls, a store which disappears as the process of 
germination proceeds, and which is no doubt made use of for the nourishment of the 
young plant. It seems possible at least that a similar ferment action may be the 
cause of the transformation here, particularly when it is remembered that in the intes¬ 
tines of many animals, notably in the herbivora, a digestion of cellulose somewhere 
takes place, and that probably under the influence and by the activity of bacteria, 
which are themselves vegetable organisms, although in their case it is hardly likely 
that an isolcible ferment is prepared by them for the work. The proved existence, 
therefore, of diastatic ferments almost universally in plants, and the probability of 
existence of the others alluded to, besides the discovery of other ferments in the 
vegetable kingdom, not immediately connected with the process of germination, have 
directed investigation into the metabolic changes in the seed with the view of dis¬ 
covering such ferments there. In 1874 some observations were published by v. Gorup- 
Besanez, which indicated the existence of a peptone-forming ferment in the seeds of 
the Vetcb, being there in company with another which had amylolytic or diastatic 
properties. Y. Gorup-Besanez speaks of this body* as having power to convert fibrin 
into peptone, but he did not apparently trace its normal action in germination, as he 
does not indicate what changes it causes in the proteids stored in the seed. In 1875 
he supplemented his observations on the Vetch in another paper,! in which he states 
* ‘ Deutsch. Chem. Gesell. Ber.,’ 1874, p. 1478. 
f Ibid., 1875. 
