7/hile the rate cf absorption in corn, peas, and lupines is 

 very different, it is, nevertheless in each case, most rapid 

 during the first few hours. About eighty per cent of the total 

 amount absorbed by the com is taken up in the first twenty 

 four hours. In the same time the peas take up one hundred, and 

 the lupines ninety five per cent of the maximum amount. In the 

 corn, from twenty hours to seventy hours soaking there is a 

 continually diminishing rate of increase in weight. During the 

 last period of four hours ending with the seventy second hour 

 of the soaking process, there is still water taken up by the 

 com. The com also shows a gain of fifty seven per cent as 

 early as the sixtieth hour of the, soaking. During the first 

 four hours the com increased in weight twenty per cent, lu- 

 pines eighteen per cent, and the peas sixty three per cent. 



Since the increase in the peas is so great an experiment 

 was conducted, covering the first five hours, in which experi- 

 ment the weights were taken every hour. The results appear at 

 the bottom of table JS. The lupines reached the maximum, with 

 some irregularities, after soaking forty hours; later there 

 was a considerable loss in weight. The marked los3 in weight 

 in the lupines and the slight variations in the weight of the 

 peas after twenty hours in the water is probably due, as Nobbe 

 states, to the solution of some of the substances of the seed3. 

 The great variation in the lupine seems to result from a dif- 



