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The nucleus in one case had disappeared, together with the starch-granules. The mere burying of lime-leaves in damp earth for nine days did not cause the destruction of the starch-granules.
These effects must be attributed to the transudation of the secretion through the epidermis into the cells. The secretion with which worms moisten leaves likewise acts on the starch-granules within the cells. My son examined some leaves of the ash and many of the lime, which had fallen off the trees and had been partly dragged into worm-burrows.
Carbonic-acid gas is the active agent required; and yeast so acts upon the little starch-granules, which the microscope shows as forming the finest flour, that this gas is formed and evenly distributed through the whole dough. The process is slow, and in the action some of the natural sweetness of the flour is lost.
From the secretion with which the leaves are moistened being alkaline, and from its acting both on the starch-granules and on the protoplasmic contents of the cells, we may infer that it resembles in nature not saliva, but pancreatic secretion; and we know from Fredericq that a secretion of this kind is found in the intestines of worms.
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