THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 89 



jection on the side of the young stem or caulicle which, when 

 the seedhng begins to grow, engages one side of the testa and 

 aids in prying it open and allowing the young plantlet to es- 

 cape. This peg, however, seems to be a peculiarity of the 

 gourd family and by no means the usual thing in seedlings, 

 yet botanical texts are still having difficulty in omitting refer- 

 ences to it. It is, to be sure, an interesting structure but no 

 more worth studying in an elementary course than many an- 

 other individual peculiarity. A study of the squash or pump- 

 kin seed usually formed part of the ancient course in botany 

 but that was before we had decided what is fundamental in the 

 study of seeds. 



Test for Cane Sugar Needed. — One of the first tasks 

 set the beginner in botany, zoology or physiology is the test- 

 ing of various foods for starches, oils, porteids and sugars. 

 Most of these are easily made and give saitsfactory results 

 until one comes to the sugars and then trouble begins. It is 

 easy enough to discover the presence of grape sugar by the 

 well known test with Fehlings solution, but nobody seems to 

 have designed an equally facile method of showing the occur- 

 rence of cane sugar though it often occurs in plants. To be 

 sure if a thing tastes sweet and a test for grape sugar shows 

 no grape sugar present, we may assume that the sweet is cane 

 sugar but we have not proved it. All we have shown is the ab- 

 sence of grape sugar. It is possible that a given liquid to be 

 tested might be poisonous and so not to be tested by taste. 

 Under such conditions the discovery that no grape sugar was 

 present might lead to the assumption that no sugar was con- 

 tained in the liquid. Cane sugar seems more difficult to identi- 

 fy than most common foods, but we submit that if substances 

 are to be tested for other foods, they should be tested for cane 

 sugar also. 



