606 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1456 



special organs exist on the young leaves of 

 plants wliose function it is to fix itlie air mtix>- 

 gen and he called these organs "albumen gen- 

 erators." This supplement 'to Jamieson's flret 

 announcement and the somewhat loose state- 

 ment of his proffered evidence on the nitrogen 

 fixation, coupled with the indelible impression 

 of Lawes and Gilbert's and Boussignault's ex- 

 periments and conclusions, caused the scienti- 

 fic world as a whole to scout or ignore Jamie- 

 son's evidence and the earlier contentions of 

 Ville and a few others to the same eiiect. In 

 1911, Mameli and PoUaeei- published a state- 

 ment of experimental results which were not 

 subject to the criticisms pertinent in Jamie- 

 son's ease and which proved conclusively that a 

 variety of green plants possess the power of 

 fixing atmospheric niti-ogen. Later statements 

 by them^ only confirmed their earlier asser- 

 tions. They did not accept Jamieson's supple- 

 mentally statement relative to the mechanism of 

 the fixation in question. 



Even .the world of science is so conservative 

 as not to have caused a general acceptance of 

 the contentions of Jamieson and Mameli and 

 P'ollacci, despite the fact that Moore and Web- 

 ster* and Moore, Webster and Whitley,'^ as 

 well as Wann,® have more recently furnished 

 ample confirmatory evidence with fresh water 

 and marine algse as material. In order to fui-- 

 nish further evidence for securing an accep- 

 tance of this new view of nitrogen fixation 

 which is directly opposed to the old established 

 viev/ and to obtain data for tlie wheat 

 plant which has not been studied in that 

 regard, the writers have recently carried 

 out an experiment resulting as indicated in the 

 general conclusion introducing this brief note. 

 Wlisat plants were grown in "Shive's best" 

 solution of an osmotic pressure of 1.3 atmos- 

 pheres. These solutions were so constituted as 



- Atti dcll'Instituto Botainco della B. Univer- 

 sita de Paria, Vol. 13, p. 351. 



■A Ibid., Vol. 14, p. 159, and Vol. 16, p. 197. 



•1 Proo. Boy. Soc. Land., Series B, Vol. 91, p. 

 201 (1920). 



■'Ibid., VoL 92, p. 51 (1921). 



<■' Amer. Jour. Bot., Vol. 8, pp. 1-29, January, 

 1931. 



to have a.pproximateIy the same concentration 

 thi-oughout, regardless of whether or not nitro- 

 gen was present. The containers for the solu- 

 tion were quart Mason fruit jars and the usual 

 technique was employed. Five wheat seed- 

 lings per jar, and six jars of each kind of 

 solution were employed, thus testing thirty 

 plants with each solution. In the case of the 

 solution 'Containing no nitrogen, twelve jars 

 were employed, six of them 'being kept in the 

 greenhouse until seeds were formed. All the 

 other plants were grown for a period of six 

 weeks only. It is impossible now to go into 

 the many intei'esting features of this and 

 other experiments which we are conducting on 

 the important subject of nitrogen fixation. 

 Suffice it to say that in a number of series of 

 wheat plants grown without nitrogen and with 

 varying quantities of 'nitrate, definite evidence 

 was adduced that 'all the wheat plants fix ni'tro- 

 gen from the air. Even excluding the nitro- 

 gen content of 'the cultui-e solutions at the end 

 of the experiment, because of some irregular 

 data in the analyses, there is a gain of nitro- 

 gen from the air which varies in different 

 series from 13 to 21 per cent, of the total 

 amount of nitrogen found in 'the plant. With 

 the nitrogen in the solutions taken into ac- 

 count, these values will be much larger. 



A series of experiments with barley is now 

 being completed, and promises to yield similar 

 results to those obtained with wheat. Legumes 

 and other plants will now be studied, and 

 many other features of 'the subject investi- 

 gated. There can be no question now, how- 

 ever, that the teaching of all our books, and 

 nearly all our iteacheiB on the subject to-day 

 are erroneous and must <be changed completely 

 'to accord with the facts presented by us, and 

 by the other investigators whom we have cited 

 above. As Moore and Webster have put it, 

 authority has too long held sway over logic and 

 experimental fact. It is high time to let those 

 considerations rule. A full, theoretical and 

 historical discussion of 'this pi-oblem will be 

 given in the detailed account of our experi- 

 ments. 



C. B LiPMAN 



J. K. Taylor 



