Eg2 Cooke and Schively on Observations on the 
from experience in gathering the tubercles. Thus the seed 
lies loose in the soil, awaiting the favorable contact of the 
beech-root. Now such variation in the size and time of 
appearance of these plants is shown, that granted the seed’s 
ability to retain vitality, the germination may occur when 
the new roots of beech reach their vicinity, even though 
this should be early in the next season. No other hypothesis 
will explain the constant succession of young plants well into 
the summer. 
Several attempts to study the germination have been 
made, but as yet these have proved unsuccessful. Many 
factors combine to render this a difficult problem. The 
extreme minuteness of the seeds, the small proportion of 
these which develop into plants, the apparent necessity for 
chemotactic contact with the beech-root, and possibly some 
soil peculiarity, all combine to make successful study some- 
what troublesome. 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG PLANT. 
A young tuber about one-sixteenth inch in diameter has 
an irregularly elliptical outline, being longest in a vertical 
direction. It has a one-celled epidermis of cubical, nucle- 
ated cells, with slightly thickened walls. The cortex is of 
large thin-walled cells, well filled already with starch. A 
few bundle-masses stream irregularly through the cortex, 
in every direction, near the base of the tuber. Several of 
the larger bundle-masses lie about in the centre of the tuber. 
These bundles are of densely stained embryonic cells, with 
scarcely any thickening developed. They are still in a quite 
primitive, undifferentiated state. 
No roots have emerged as yet. One only may be seen 
forming within the tuber. But the group of embryonic 
cells is as yet in a relatively deep portion of the cortex. 
There is in the whole tuber only this single root-trace as yet. 
Such a plant is one that establishes a lateral connection 
