FACTORS AFFECTING SEASONAL ACTIVITIES. 23 



Dr. MacDougal The birches are too much mixed up, sir, for me to 

 follow them. I don't want to venture anything on the birches. 



Mr. Southzvick I would like to ask you another question. Do you 

 believe there are some ripening, processes? May it not be the case, Dr. 

 MacDougal, that there may be a ripening process in the seed which is 

 to be fulfilled before the seed will germinate? You know that we find 

 that the Solanum tuberosum has to have a ripening process before it will 

 germinate? In other words, it will not germinate until spring. Is it 

 not possible that the seed will have some ripening processes, changing 

 sugar into starch and starch into sugar before it will germinate? 



Dr. MacDougal This is a very elusive subject. In my paper, I 

 say that these seeds were made to germinate seven or eight months ahead 

 of the time when they normally would germinate. That is to say, Pro- 

 fessor Southwick, the seeds are made to germinate when they would not 

 ordinarily until next February, so if there is a ripening process there, 

 it is finished very quickly. That matter of the ripening period is some- 

 thing I have never been able to get any information on that is at all 

 satisfactory. 



Mr. Southwick Is it true about Solanum tuberosum? 



Dr. MacDougal It is true that some will germinate in September 

 and some will not until later. That whole matter is a very elusive one, 

 and I have never been able to make a very satisfactory statement of it, 

 to myself, or anybody else. 



Dr. Evans In some experiments with the nightshades, I have been 

 able to germinate the seed at once in the fall, and raise them during the 

 winter in the greenhouse. The peculiar thing about it was that the 

 plants were set all winter and would not do anything in the way of 

 growth until about the normal time in the spring. A most remarkable 

 case this was. I was never able to force them. They simply stood dor- 

 mant after the seed had made a few leaves, and with the gooseberry 

 and currant (the wild species) I found several cases where they would 

 not force during the winter. If the buds were just about open, they 

 would stay until about the normal time in the spring. Last fall up in 

 Lapland where I went for the Department of Agriculture, I noticed a 

 most remarkable situation in the experiments going on at Lulea. % That 

 is up in the extreme northern part of Sweden, the Gulf of Bothnia. 

 They have an experiment station there for the purpose of hardening 

 plants, making them more resistant to cold. Two ice houses were con- 

 structed, one a cooling house and one a freezing house. They had them 

 constructed so they could hold the temperature to a fraction of a degree, 

 if necessary. They had some barley and some cereals in boxes in the 

 earth, and at different times they were submitted first to a cooling proc- 

 ess and then to a freezing process, imitating untimely freezing in the 

 spring and fall. The trouble in that province is that barley especially 

 being the main cereal up there, was apt to freeze out about once in 11 

 years. I found them laboriously selecting the plant that had grown under 



