372 The American Naturalist. 



-M , 



sification of the next edition of the A. O. U. Check-List will, in 

 truth, be archaic if again printed without change ; the 1895 

 one, just out, is a number of years behind the science of the 

 times, so we may easily imagine how very backward it will 

 appear ten years hence. 



THE PATH OF THE WATER CURRENT IN CUCUM- 

 BER PLANTS. 

 By Erwin F. Smith. 



Although Sachs* notion that the ascending water current in 

 plants passes through the walls of the vessels and not through 

 their interior, was rendered very doubtful long ago, if not 

 thoroughly exploded, by the experiments of Elfving, Vesque, 

 Erera, Boehm and others, the old statement still remains in 

 many of the text books and continues to be taught. For this 

 reason, and because the papers of the opponents of this view 

 do not seem to have received much attention in this country, 

 while Dr. Sachs' Lectures on the Physiology of Plants in H. Mar- 

 shall Ward's admirable translation, is known and read every- 

 where and deservedly so, it may be worth while to call atten- 

 tion once more to the present state of our knowledge on this 

 subject. This I shall do by presenting some experiments of 

 my own, which were made a year ago on Oucumis sativus L. 

 These were undertaken partly to verify some of Strasburger's 

 statements in his book Ueber den Bau und die Verrichtungen der 

 LetiuTupbahnen in den Pflanzen, and partly to determine, as 

 accurately as possible, the path of the water current in Cucur- 

 bitaceous stems, subject to the attack of Bacillus tracheiphilus. 

 They were begun about March 20, and continued till sometime 

 in April, the weather being by turns warm and cold, sunny, 

 windy, cloudy and rainy. About 30 well grown cucumber 

 vines were experimented upon, the following being selected 

 as typical. All were under glass in a large hot-house, devoted 

 to the cultivation of cucumbers for the winter market. None 

 of the vines trailed on the ground, but all were trained up on 



