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interesting results, which I will at once briefly communicate. 
I began the examination with pods that were supposed 
to have been just formed. In this, the earliest stage, I found 
the cotton hairs just becoming visible upon the surface of the 
seed as minute transparent hemispheres containing a few 
motionless granules — I should perhaps say translucent, for 
the cotton hairs do not seem ever to be transparent. 
In a more advanced stage the seeds were covered with hairs 
which contained numerous minute granules floating in a very- 
fluid and colourless mucus. An active rotation of the cell con- 
tents, exactly like that in Nitella, was seen in all the hairs 
that had not been injured by pressure, and continued for a 
considerable time, at least half an hour. I found it could be 
seen with Ross’s half-inch and the higher eyepieces, but I 
used chiefly a rbth. 
In a pod apparently somewhat older the appearances only 
diflered by the cell contents, which I have called colourless 
mucus above, becoming thickened, and the granules somewhat 
smaller, so that we had a fine granular mucus of a pale buff 
colour. 
As the pod becomes older the cell contents appear to 
increase in density and rotation to cease; at least I have 
not seen rotation unless in the hairs of young seeds, i.e. seeds 
from young pods of perhaps from two or three to ten or twelve 
days’ growth. I have not, unfortunately, been able to learn 
the exact age of the pods. 
On Saturday last I plucked a fine pod of Queensland cotton 
(growing in the garden of a friend) that was supposed to be 
nearly full grown, and was upwards of two inches in vertical 
diameter. In the hairs of this I found generally, but not 
always, a considerable amount of secondary deposit, made 
evident by the thickening of the walls and by its action on 
polarised light. But in the hairs of younger pods there was 
nothing of the kind, and the walls were so thin as scarcely to 
aftord evidence of their presence, it requiring considerable 
