EDITORIAL. 
Tue era of machinery appears to have arrived for American botany. 
It was probably inevitable whenever physiological studies attracted 
sufficient attention to take a prominent part in the curriculum. But 
just the manner and time of its advent could hardly have been antici- 
pated. The elaborate auxanometers, clinostats and other special 
pieces used in foreign laboratories, made familiar to American bot- 
anists through books and journals, described by visitors to Tiibingen, 
Leipzig, Cambridge, Vienna and other famous centers of research, 
and of which a sample instrument has occasionally been purchased 
for the general equipment of a laboratory in this country, seemed too 
expensive and too difficult to obtain ever to become common in 
merica. 
At first very simple appliances served the teacher’s purpose. — The 
demonstration of transpiration was made by passing a fresh sprig 
through pasteboard over a tumbler of water, and inverting another 
tumbler over it, and heliotropism was shown by setting a plant before 
awindow. The need of accurate records led to the adoption of various 
mechanical methods. Special devices for demonstrating growth were 
first brought forward. More than a decade ago Professor Bessey’s arc 
indicator became well known, and a few years later the rather elaborate 
machines devised by Professor Barnes and Mr. Bumpus were figured and 
described in the journals, and very recently Miss Golden’s auxanometer 
has been described. About three years ago Mr. Swezey described a 
centrifugal apparatus for studying geotropism, and two years ago Pro- 
fessor Thomas illustrated and described an apparatus for recording 
root pressure. Other apparatus has from time to time been devised 
and some of it described in the journals or before societies. But none 
of these pieces could be obtained in the market. Each laboratory 
ne obliged to make its own apparatus, or import from foreign 
akers. 
The first pieces of physiological apparatus emanating from an Amer- 
can laboratory, duplicates of which could be purchased, were nee 
anometer and centrifugal apparatus originating at Purdue University, 
and displayed at the Madison meeting of the A. A. A. S. last year. 
he considerable number of laboratories which have availed them- 
Selves within the year of the chance of securing these pieces of appa- 
Fatus, shows that the plan of offering newly devised apparatus for sale 
Meets with favor. 
