IN THE SEED WHICH ACCOMPANY GERMINATION. 
41 
he has discovered a similar body in the seeds of Hemp, Flax, and Barley. V. Gorup- 
Besanez was followed in 1878 by Krauch,* who says that he fails to confirm his 
results. In a later paper by the latter writer,! he severely criticises v. Gorup’s 
method of working, and states that the results he obtained were due to imperfect 
experiments. While v. Gorup-Besanez says that fibrin acted on by the body he 
prepared from the vetch seed was dissolved, and that then the solution when filtered 
gave a good biuret reaction, Krauch insists that the biuret reaction was due to some¬ 
thing present in the ferment solution and was readily yielded by the latter alone. He 
says, further, that the fibrin in his own experiments appeared to get less, but that this 
was due to shrinkage of the flocks of it, and not to solution. Krauch’s work, how¬ 
ever, appears untrustworthy, for he does not explain the disappearance of the fibrin 
which Y. Gorup alleges, nor does he show that there was no formation of peptone in 
the process, although the ferment solution itself might have given a biuret reaction. 
With such a ferment solution to begin with, other means were necessary to detect the 
peptone if any were formed. Krauch’s own control experiments were somewhat scanty. 
Proteolytic Ferments. 
The nature of the ferment discovered by v. Gorup-Besanez was not satisfactorily 
established in his investigations. Fie calls attention himself to the fact that in the 
young shoots of newly-germinated plants of Vicia, under certain conditions, large 
quantities of leucin and asparagin might be shown to exist. The ease with which 
crystalline bodies of that nature would be able to pass through such structures as cell 
walls points to the probability of this rather than peptone being the form in which 
nitrogenous matter would pass to the growing points from the reservoirs in which it 
had been stored. Moreover, the fact that peptone cannot be discovered in or near the 
growing parts, and the almost complete indiffusibility of any other form of proteid 
matter, lend much support to the view that crystalline products are the ultimate 
expression of germinative metabolism of proteids. On these grounds, therefore, there 
is a great probability that the proteolytic ferment in the seeds will be found to 
resemble the tryptic rather than the peptic ferment of the animal organism. 
V. Gorup-Besanez was not, however, able to convince himself that the ferment in 
the vetch seed carried the changes in the fibrin beyond the stage of peptone. 
Since that time Martin^ has shown that a tryptic ferment is present in the latex 
of Papaya carica. 
When v. Gorup-Besanez was writing, but little had been ascertained as to the 
nature of the proteid substances stored in seeds. Bitthausen’s work had apparently 
shown the existence of bodies differing greatly from animal proteids, and forming a 
* ‘ Beitrage zur Kenntniss der ungeformten Fermente in den Ptianzen.’ Berlin, 1878. 
t ‘ Landwirthsch. Versuchs-Stat.,’ vol. 27, p. 383. 
t Mourn, of Physiol.,’ vol. 5 (No. 4), and vol. 6 (No. 6). 
MDCCOLXXX VTI.— B. G 
