70 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
zyme changed the soluble starch stored 
up in the kernel to a fluid form as mal¬ 
tose, a kind of glucose or grape sugar. 
In normal growth the fluid solution of 
maltose is formed into a sprout, the 
sprout into a plant, while the plant ful¬ 
fils its destiny by perfecting seed, and this 
fixing of the fluid sugars in the sap into 
woody tissue and starchy grain is per¬ 
formed by another enzyme with an oppo¬ 
site function called invertase. There are 
a great number of yeasts or saocha- 
romyces, so-called because they thrive best 
in sugar or starch solutions. 
Pasteur studied about a dozen and front 
some of them got the bad results the 
brewers complained of. He finally iso¬ 
lated and made pure cultures of two 
which are called high and low yeasts on 
account of the temperatures at which they 
thrive 'best. The low temperature yeast be¬ 
ing easiest to keep pure. The yeast cells 
during their multiplication and growth 
split up the sugars into carbondioxide 
gas and alcohol by excreting ferments 
that are of a similar nature to the enzy¬ 
mes of plants or diastase of malt but with 
different functions. Every variety of 
plants seems to have its own peculiar en¬ 
zymes. See report of J. Wolff. *(E. S. 
R. Vol. XIX, page 808.) 
From a summary of recent experiments 
on the phenomena of liquefacation and 
coagulation of starch the conclusion was 
reached that the principal factors which 
come into play are the physical state of 
starch and the reaction of the salts which 
accompany it. Experiments are reported 
on the action of malt diastase at 65 de¬ 
grees C. on starch of different sorts. The 
*Note —E. S. R. and C. refers to Experiment 
Station Record. 
lowest amount of starch inverted. 25.4 
per cent, was noted with rice and the high¬ 
est value 99 per cent., with white Cuzco 
corn. 
“In these experiments 25 cc. of 10 per 
cent, malt extract were used with 3 grains 
of the raw starch. The microscopic ex¬ 
amination of the various samples shows 
nothing abnormal morphologically. Thus 
we see that the physical properties of raw 
starch may be very different, even for 
varieties of the same species. This more 
or less great resistance of raw starches 
toward diastase does not therefore suffice 
to class the species in such and such* 
category since they may vary with 
the climate, but it permits us to ex¬ 
plain how in the aerial organs of the same 
plants, starch may be found in greatly 
different physical states/’ This would go 
to show that the healthy enzymes might 
be found in the top of a foot rot orange 
tree, while at the place of gumming near 
the ground the enzymes have lost their 
power and cannot change the sweet gum¬ 
my sap into stored up starch or woody tis¬ 
sue but allow it to accumulate and burst 
the bark as gum. To show the complexity 
of this subject I quote from a report of 
“Fermentation Investigations”—(E. S. 
R. XV. Jan. ’04) L. Matruchot and Mal¬ 
lard. “In addition to the fermentation pro¬ 
duced by yeast and similar organisms the 
authors following investigations by Pat¬ 
ens Le Chartier and Bellamy show that 
there is a fermentation which takes place 
in fleshy fruits, tubes, etc., that is inde¬ 
pendent of yeasts or other foreign organ¬ 
isms. The methods of the experiment are 
described in detail—fruits of pumpkins 
and apples, onion bulbs, beet roots, etc., 
being kept under aseptic conditions for a 
