304 



The Action of Cold on Plants [July, 



will be in a better position both financially and socially than 

 they were before the passing of the Act." 



A number of interesting reports are given on some of the 

 small holdings already established, together with particulars 

 as to the provision of small holdings in each county. 



In the Report on Allotments it is stated that the total 

 quantity of land held for the purpose of allotments by the 

 various Local Authorities in England and Wales on the 

 31st December, 1909, was 26,764 acres, of which 5,687 acres 

 were the property of the Councils, and 21,077 acres were 

 leased. This land is let to 90,550 individual tenants, 

 21 Associations, and 1 Committee. 



The number of applications received for allotments in 1909 

 was 16,996, the total quantity applied for being 6,048 acres ; 

 2,407 acres were acquired, as compared with 1,253 acres in 

 1908, and 5,818 individual applicants and 9 Associations were 

 provided with allotments by Local Authorities, in addition to 

 a large number of applicants who were provided with allot- 

 ments on land previously acquired. 



The action of cold on plants varies not only with the nature 

 of the plants themselves, but also in accordance with certain 



little-understood changes which take 

 The Action of Cold place in their cell-contents. The theory 

 on Plants. which has in the past been accepted as 



explaining the death of plants from 

 cold was based on the rupture of the cell through expansion 

 and contraction due to changes in temperature. When the 

 tissues of higher plants are frozen, films of pure ice form 

 on the walls abutting on intercelluar spaces, and these films 

 grow steadily to quite large lumps of ice, causing disruption 

 of the tissues. Muller-Thurgau and Molisch held that the 

 fatal effect of freezing was to be traced to the resulting dessi- 

 cation of the protoplasm whereby its structure was irrecover- 

 ably disorganised. It was thought that it was only on the 

 thawing of the cell that the fatal disorganisation set in, and 

 that if the thawing proceeded very slowly recovery might take 

 place, although if the change of temperature were sudden and 

 the thawing rapid, recovery would be impossible. Experi- 

 ments, however, demonstrated the incorrectness of this view. 



