710 Miller.—A Physiological Shidy of the 
The method of Frankfurt 1 for estimating the weight of the seedlings to 
the seeds could not be used here. The seedlings of the sunflower examined 
by him were grown over distilled water. Thus the increase in the amount of 
ash up to a certain stage of the seedling was considered an index to the 
decrease in weight of the seedling. This method would have been impossible 
here,since, owing to the advanced stages at which the seedlings were examined, 
some compact substratum was necessary. The small amounts of salts that 
the plants no doubt absorbed from the sand used would have influenced 
the results. 
For this work the following method was finally used. One hundred 
seeds of the average size and appearance were selected and the hulls 
removed. These were then divided into lots of ten. Each lot was then 
ground in a mortar and dried down carefully in the same manner as the 
material used for analyses. This method showed the variations of small 
lots of seeds. The total dry weight of the one hundred seeds thus selected 
was 7*387 grams. Another lot of the same number was treated in the same 
way. The results obtained showed a weight of 7*36 grams. A third set of 
seeds was taken and the tips or rudimentary hypocotyls were removed from 
the cotyledons. The removal was made with a razor, and with care one 
could remove the tip without at the same time taking along with it parts of 
the cotyledons. The tips, as is known, lengthen into the hypocotyls and 
roots during germination. Since the hypocotyls and roots were examined 
separately from the cotyledons during this work, it was necessary to find 
the amount of material and kind present in the tips before germination. 
For that reason they were removed and dried down, as were the cotyledons. 
The weight of the cotyledons plus the tips amounted to 7*275 grams. The 
difference in the amount of dry material in the three lots of one hundred 
seeds each is thus practically negligible. Since the amount of dry material 
in lots of one hundred seeds showed so little variation, the same method was 
used for obtaining the relative weights of the hypocotyls and cotyledons of 
the seedlings at the various stages at which they were analysed. A quantity 
of seeds of the average size and appearance was selected and planted in the 
same way and under the same conditions as those used for the analyses. 
When the seedlings had reached the stage desired they were taken up, and 
one hundred, representative of the stage, were selected. The seedlings thus 
selected were carefully washed free from sand, and the cotyledons and hypo¬ 
cotyls separated from each other and dried, separately, after the same 
manner as the seeds. The weight of 100 cotyledons and hypocotyls at the 
various stages is shown at the bottom of Table III, and is also shown by 
Fig. 7. The results obtained for the last three periods is only approximately 
correct, since it is impossible to recover all the small roots from the sand in 
these stages. As much of the root-system as possible was taken from the 
1 1. c. 
