However, the enzymes of Buchner are probably bits off the protoplasm, as it were, and so the essentials of the theory of fermentation remain, the immediate agent being not that of protoplasm itself, but of something made by or broken off from it. Enzymes, or similar bodies, are known to be very common in plants, and the suspicion that fungi do much work with their aid is abundantly confirmed. It seems, indeed, that there are a whole series of these bodies which have the power of carrying over oxygen to other bodies, and so bringing about oxidations of a peculiar character. These curious enzymes were first observed owing to studies on the changes which wine and plant juice undergo when exposed to the action of the oxygen of the air. The browning of cut apples is known to be due to the action of an oxydase, that is, an oxygen carrying ferment, and the same is claimed for the deep colouring of certain lacs obtained from the juice of plants, such as Anacardiaceæ, which are pale and transparent when fresh drawn, but which gradually darken in colour on exposure to the air. Oxydases have been isolated from beets, dahlia, potato-tubers, and several other plants. This fact explains a phenomenon known to botanists, and partly explained by Schönbein as far back as 1868, that if certain fungi (_e.g._, _Boletus beridies_) are broken or bruised, the yellow or white flesh at once turns blue; this action is now traced to the presence in the cell sap of an oxydase. It is the diastatic activity of Aspergillus which is utilised in the making of saké from rice, and in the preparation of soy from the soja bean in Japan. Katz has recently tested the diastatic activity of Aspergillus, of Penicillium, and of _Bacterium megatherium_, in the presence of large and small quantities of sugar, and found all are able to produce not only diastase, but also other enzymes; as the sugar accumulates the diastase formed diminishes, whereas the accumulation of other carbo-hydrates produces no such effect. Harting’s investigation on the destruction of timber by fungi derives new interest from the discovery of an emulsion-like enzyme in many such wood-destroying forms, which splits up glucosides, amygdalin, and other substances into sugar, and that hyphæ feed on other carbo-hydrates. The fact, also, that Aspergillus can form inverts of the sucrase and maltase types, as well as emulsin, inulate, and diastase, according to circumstances of nutrition, will explain why this fungus can grow on almost any organic substance it may happen to alight upon. The secretion of special enzymes by fungi has a further interest just now, for recent investigations promise to bring us much nearer to an understanding of the phenomena of parasitism than it was possible when I was at work upon them some forty or fifty years ago.