Stopes ancl Eujii, The nutritive relations of the surrounding tissues etc. 21 
slightly higher forms before they pass into the egg, still however 
in a solnble form. 
What then are the „Hofmeister Körperchen“? There are 
freqnently vacuoles round the simple protein grains of the Cycads 
and Ginkgo 1 ) and further we have observed starch and protein 
grains in close proximity in the egg cells of Ginkgo, Zamia etc. 
In Pinus the „Hofmeister Körperchen“ are more conspicuous, and 
contain protein grains and often also starch grains in the later 
stages of development. It appears to us to be highly possible that 
the vacuoles surrounding these grains of food stuffs may have 
a digestive capacity, and may therefore have much the same 
function and origin as those developped round food particles in 
unicellular organisms such as Arnoeba etc. In the general cytoplasm 
of the egg there are also numbers of granules many of which are 
protein grains identical in Chemical reactions, form, and size, with 
those in the nutritive vacuoles, and it may he that they are stored 
there temporarily and are awaiting their turn for digestion. 
Possibly the reason that these “nutritive”, or “digestive” 
vacuoles have appeared to so many workers to be nuclei, or to 
have the appearance of nuclei, may be that in general they have 
judged them chiefly from their staining properties with usual stains, 
and from their superficial appearance. In microtome sections stained 
with Triple stain, the large protein grains certainly stain like nucleoli, 
and the small grains give the appearance of the nuclear net work. 
But if one uses fresh material, or liand sections of alcohol material, 
stained them with acid methyl green 2 ) one sees a considerable 
difference in the staining properties of these grains and of true nuclei. 
Also the result of artificial digestion of the protein grains with 
pepsin glycerine indicates that they are a different form of protein 
substance from that composing the nucleolus. We may suggest that 
many of the tiny granules one finds always in large quantities in 
these vacuoles (cf. fig. 10) may have the nature of zymogens or 
proenzymes for botli proteases and diastases and may be the source 
of the digestive properties of the vacuoles. 
That the nutritive vacuoles are less developed and conspicuous 
in the Cycads and Ginkgo than in the higher Gymnosperms may 
be correlated with the fact that in the former the jacket cells are 
more highly developed than in the latter, and also with a certain 
difference in the form and properties of the food stuffs brought 
into the egg cell. 
Although these views are the outcome of the Observation of a 
large number of facts, there is perforce much in them that is 
Suggestion to and that may be useful only in the present state of 
our knowledge and require modification as we continue our researches. 
x ) It is interesting to note that Goroschankin calls the protein grains 
in Ginkgo „Hofmeister Körperchen - * in the description of plates in his russian 
paper. (Wiss. Schriften d. Moskauer Univ. 1880. PL VIII. fig. 87 a.) 
2 ) Zacharias. E., „Ueber Nachweis u. Vorkommen v. Nuclein". (Bericht, 
d. D. Bot. Ges Bd. XVI. p. 194 and 197.) We used the stain both with and 
without the addition of sodium sulphate. 
