258 "The Rev. PaTRICK KEITH on 
vigorous than it would otherwise have been at-the same season of 
the year, owing to the tendency by which the radicle and plume- 
let assumed respectively a descending and ascending direction, 
thus quitting the sources of nourishment that were placed next 
to them, in order to reach other sources that were placed at a 
distance. 
On the 31st of July, at nine o'clock in the morning, the coty- 
ledon of the grain was an inch in length, surmounted by the 
summit of the first real leaf, that projected beyond it by about 
a quarter of an inch, with an inflected point, and forming, to- 
gether with the cotyledon, the figure of a hook or sickle. At 
nine o'clock in the evening, the summit of the first leaf, still in- 
flected at the point, surmounted the sheath by about half an 
inch. Its elongation was still vertical, and its sickle-like bend 
lower than even the bottom of the tube, as if forcing itself down 
into the open air. The bean was also bent down by the stem in 
the same manner; but the lateral fibres sent out by the radicle 
were rather ascending into the earth above them. The lobes of — 
the cotyledon were so far separated as to show that the plumelet 
had ascended vertically within them, and was ape about to emerge | 
from between them. 
On the Ist of August the hook of the grain A iiit, which 
measured an inch and a half in length, and still continued to - 
ascend in a vertical direction through the earth, was in its second 
leaf; while the plumelet of the bean, which had just begun to 
protrude its divisions beyond the contour of the cotyledons, was 
found to have elongated itself wholly in a vertical line. 
In the above stage of advancement the experiment was put an 
end to; it having been already sufficiently proved that Dr. Dar- 
win's hypothesis could not possibly be true, since the radicle was 
still elongated by descent, even when the earth and moisture 
were 
