2 Scienfitic Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 
were then put in to germinate, with the results shown in the 
following table :— 
TABLE OF GERMINATIONS (per cent.). 
Time 
of Red | Meadow |p- 
Lor. agement Pea. | Barley.| Flax. | Swede. | ajjvor. | Fescue. Timothy. 
tion test. | 
A. | 14days.| 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 
B ee 65 96 87 88 90 91 69 
Oh aS 0 0 0 0 0 0 12 
D Se 66 95 98 72 72 85 70 
The germination of the timothy in lots A and C is to be 
accounted for by the fact that these seeds had not absorbed water 
to any appreciable extent when put into the liquid air. To test 
this point, I put some timothy seeds into water, and found that 
there was no apparent change in size after six and a half days, 
while many of the seeds were still hard and dry internally. 
So much, then, for the experiments. 
When we attempt to draw conclusions from these and previous 
experiments, we are on more uncertain ground. We may first of 
all confine our attention to the dry seeds. And we are at once 
confronted by the question, Did the dry seeds acquire the same 
temperature as the surrounding medium? On this point there 
does not seem to be much direct experimental evidence, and the 
answer is more one of probability than of certainty. Brown and 
Escombe,' in their experiments, kept the seeds for 110 hours at a 
temperature of — 190°C. In the experiments of Prof. Dewar 
and Sir William Thiselton-Dyer’ the seeds were kept for six hours 
at the temperature of liquid hydrogen (— 252° C.). In this last 
case Prof. Dewar had no doubt but that the seeds were brought to 
the temperature of the liquid hydrogen. While Sir William 
Thiselton-Dyer accepts Prof. Dewar’s view that the seeds experi- 
mented on acquired the temperature of liquid hydrogen, he goes 
on to say that in the case of seeds which have been heated to 
100° C. and still survived “it may be taken as absolutely certain 
that in this case that temperature never reached the embryo, but 
1 Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. Ixii., 1898. 2 Ann. of Bot., vol. xiii., 1899. 
