270 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [APRIL 
TABLE IV. 
CELTIS PALLIDA. SEEDLING No. 2. January and February 1905. 
Date Time ging Loss or gain Conditions 
Jan. 30 | 10:09 A 22.638 
1:10 P.M. | 22.630 | 0.008 loss After standing in dry air 
3:40 22.626 0.004 “< “ce ““ “ «@ 
30)" O245 A: Me |) 22659 | 0.027 gain “wetting 
12:45 P.M. | 22.628 | 0.025 loss ‘** standing in dry air 
gi 22.634 | 0.006 gain “wetting 
Feb. 1 | 9:48 A.M. | 22.592 | 0.042 loss ast ng in dry air 
9:50 0.027 Weight of plant above ground 
2:08 P.M. | 0.045 | o.o28 gain | After wetting - 
soil, an interesting result in harmony with earlier experiments, 
showing the direct relation between available soil water and rate 
of transpiration.3 
On the other hand, while the quantity of water absorbed by: 
number I was so meager as to be negligible, that absorbed by num- 
ber 2 was much more, in one case almost exactly 100 per cent. of 
its own weight, i. e., of the part above ground when it was after- 
wards severed from the root. Number 2, although apparently 
perfectly healthy while the work was in progress, seems neverthe- 
less to have reached a condition in which the diminished supply 
of water from the soil was followed by a marked acceleration of 
leaf absorption, while in the case of number 1, growing as it was 
in moist soil, no such compensation was made or required. 
Of interest as bearing on the validity of determinations of absorp- 
tion by the use of detached shoots is the fact that while seedling 
number 2, after it had finally been cut off at the surface of the ground, 
absorbed in a few hours its own weight of water, it had done pre- 
cisely the same thing before mutilation, only in longer time. It 
may well be that a detached shoot, cut off from its normal source 
of water supply, will absorb more rapidly through its leaves than 
the same shoot, which, while attached, is supplied, even inade- 
quately, from the soil; but this difference plainly does not justify 
the degree of discredit that has been thrown upon evidence derived 
from experiments with separated parts of plants. 
Three other seedlings of Celtis pallida were treated like the 
preceding ones, except that the observations were not begun until 
3 SPALDING, V. M., Soil water in relation to transpiration. Torreya 5:25. 1905- 
