71 



because, owing to the limited displacement by the swelling, the 

 spring could not easily be loaded beyond its capacity to register, 

 although any component of the force acting is really vastly in 

 excess of its powers to register in units of weight. 



The objections made above do indeed apply to any apparatus 

 not used in accordance with the principle enunciated. But Det- 

 mer is careful to say that his device * is only for the purpose of 

 showing that external work is done by swelling seeds. 



C. R. Barnes. 



Notwithstanding the careful explanation given above by Pro- 

 fessor Barnes the writer is still of the opinion that overloading' 

 from the standpoint of the strength of the spring is, as previously 

 stated, entirely possible, and it seems too that this is the critical 

 point. — H. M. Richards. 



NEWS ITEMS 



Volume 7 of the Contributions from the Department of Botany 

 of Columbia University has recently been completed by the pub- 

 lication of the 175th number of the series. 



Dr. H. M. Richards, Dr. P. A. Rydberg and Miss Louise B. 

 Dunn are spending their summer vacations in Europe. 



Dr. D. T. MacDougal left New York on June 2d to conduct 

 some special botanical investigations in western Montana. 



Tracy Elliot Hazen, Ph.D. (Columbia University, 1900), has 

 been appointed Director of the Fairbanks Museum at St. Johns- 

 bury, Vermont, and enters upon the duties of the position this 

 month. 



Mr. Frederick H. Blodgett, recently a graduate student in 

 Columbia University, is now an assistant in the botanical depart- 

 ment of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. 



Edward W. Berry, of Passaic, N. J., a member of the Torrey 

 Botanical Club, has been awarded the Walker Prize of fifty dol- 

 lars by the Boston Society of Natural History for an essay on 

 Liriodendron. 



* Pflanzen-Phys. Prakt. 119. 



