IN THE SEED WHICH ACCOMPANY - GERMINATION. 
57 
to investigation. In his ‘ Text-book of Botany/ Sachs has figured the seed of Phoenix 
in the several stages of germination. From his drawings it appears that the young 
plant remains attached to the seed by part of the cotyledon, and by means of this 
it avails itself of the stored-up matter. On making a transverse section of the 
seed, it was seen to consist of two parts, the hard endosperm, and the soft cotyledon 
partly surrounded by the former. The endosperm was composed of elongated oblong 
cells, with enormously thickened walls, containing a very small amount of protoplasm 
and no starch. The cotyledon was made up of rather loosely arranged cells, 
containing starch granules and a very distinctive epidermis. This was composed of 
square cells, cuticularised, and containing a very granular deeply-staining protoplasm, 
but no starch. 
The cotyledon was separated from the hard parts, and glycerine extracts were made 
of both, each being ground up as finely as possible. 
The extracts were in the first instance put to digest with some ground resting seed, 
but after prolonged action neither of them seemed to have any effect; at least the 
quantity of ground cellulose had not apparently diminished. 
The extract of the cotyledons was next tried on a small piece of manufactured 
cotton. A similar quantity of the extract was well boiled, and to it a similar piece of 
cotton added. After two days’ digestion the former piece appeared to be attacked at 
the edges, where threads had frayed out. Both were now removed and boiled in 
Fehling’s fluid. The one which had been in the unboiled tube became coloured with 
reduced copper oxide in patches, particularly in the parts which seemed softest, but 
the other underwent no change of colour at all. There was apparently in the extract 
a very small trace of a ferment which produced sugar from the cellulose, but so very 
little in amount as to lead to the view that the change of the cellulose in germination 
was not due to an isolable ferment. On looking at the cotyledon, and noticing the 
character of the cells covering it, which are consequently in contact with the cellulose 
of the endosperm, it appears more likely that the latter is gradually eaten away by 
this epidermis, and that the ferment only exists in these cells. This seems probable, 
too, from a section of the endosperm. The cells are seen to be gradually broken down 
where they are in contact with the cotyledon, the other cells remaining intact till 
they are reached by the latter. 
There was no evidence that the extract of the endosperm had any action on 
cellulose at all. Evidently in it there is no ferment, and the change is due to agencies 
quite external to its cells. 
Neither extract had any diastatie action. 
I can confirm previous writers as to a diastatie ferment in the Lupin seeds, besides 
the proteolytic one. 
—B. 
M DCCCLX X X VII. 
I 
