502 The Botanical Gazette. {November, 
Observations upon the dissemination of seeds.—In the fall of 1894 
working as a student in Cornell University upon the dissemination of 
plants, I made a few rather interesting measurements, showing with 
some definiteness the effectiveness of certain adaptations. 
My apparatus was very simple, two sheets of white cheese cloth, 
nine by twelve feet, to spread beside the plants and make the fall- 
ing seeds more readily distinguishable, and a tape line for the measure- 
ments. 
I worked first with two bushes of Hamamelis Virginica standing 
close together. They were about eight feet high, and had branches 
extending about four feet out from the main stem. Most of the cap- 
sules had been split across by previous frosts, and, on the clear Octo- 
ber day of my observations, were opening as they dried. Apparently 
the inner woody layer of the capsule curves inward in drying, produc- 
ing pressure upon the tapering ends of the polished seeds that is 
finally great enough to overcome resistance, when the seeds are shot 
away with considerable violence. In the case in question, shooting of 
the seeds began a little before one o’clock, continuing with increasing 
activity up to nearly five, and then diminishing in frequency until sun- 
set. In this time upon the sheets, stretching as they did seventeen 
feet from the main stems of the bushes, and covering an area from 
nine to twelve feet wide, about one-fifth of a circle of the same radius, 
there fell no less than 1 53 seeds, of which a number were within four 
or five feet of the stems, many more at the extreme limit of the sheet, 
seventeen feet, but the largest number at a distance of about ten feet. 
How much farther they may have gone it is impossible to say, but one 
naturally infers from the numbers at the extreme limit of the sheet 
that some did go further. The distance travelled by the seed is 
doubtless dependent in large measure on the angle of the expelling 
capsule, plainly being greatest where that is forty-five degrees above 
the horizon, and the smallest when the pod is perpendicular. I am 
planning to make further measurements in the near future upon 
hamamelis and upon other plants which sling their seeds or fruits 
through their own mechanism; e. g., impatiens, oxalis, and others. 
My other observations were made upon plants with upright or as- 
cending pods opening only at the apex, a condition precluding the pos- 
sibility of direct fall from the capsule to the ground, and rendering 
necessary a swaying motion of the plant and a consequent /hrow of the 
seed for its escape. 
A plant of Enothera biennis, twenty-one inches high with the lowest 
pods six inches from the ground, showed the following results in 4 
light intermittent breeze of a late October day: At one observation 
