C. A. BARBER. 9) 
well as part of the hypocotyl below ground was covered with a 
thick coating of root-hairs. In place of the radish-like swelling of 
the sandal seedling, the lower part of the stem and the upper part 
of the tap-root were more or less thickened, doubtless acting, asin 
sandal, as a store-house for reserve materials to the young plant. 
The series of seedlings in these pots were examined at 
intervals for some 163 months, when the experiment had to be 
discontinued. The root-system developed rapidly under these 
conditions, as in the similar experiments with Santalum, forming 
a dense mass of copiously branching rootlets. This root-system 
attained its maximum in about the sixth month and, by this time, 
some half dozen leaves of small size had appeared (Plate I, fig. 6). 
But these leaves lacked the bright green colour of the first pair : 
as time went on they became chlorotic and many of them drop- 
ped—evident signs of lack of nutrition. Comparatively few 
haustoria were at any time found in the pots but, at any rate 
while the roots were healthy, there was a fairly copious supply 
of root-hairs. These disappeared entirely in the later stages, a 
number of swellings appearing at the same time which were 
traced to an attack of eelworms (Heterodera radicicola). 
At one year, the plants were all of them in a struggling 
condition, the leaves yellow and dropping and the root-system 
devoid of the finer branches and, as in sandal, covered with dark 
scars (Plate I, fig. 7). Some of the young plants were then trans- 
ferred to ordinary garden earth, and these during the next few 
months showed much improvement, new roots being formed and the 
leaves assuming again the dark green colour of the earlier stages. 
From these incomplete observations it would appear that 
Olax scandens, like Santalum album and many other parasites, 
develops at first like an ordinary non-parasitic plant, that it is 
capable of living for a long period upon the nutriment stored in 
its endosperm and, later, in its swollen stem and tap-root. Its rich 
development of root-hairs speaks of nutriment derived from the 
soil, and the brightening of the year-old plants when transferred 
from pure sand to vegetable mould suggests a considerable 
independence of growth. It is unfortunate that experiments 
