Newcorn.be, Sensitive Life of Asparagus plumosus. 
25 
internodes, shoots having been raised in the dark with 5 to 7 
tirnes as many internodes as they wonld have had in the light. 
To this phenomenon should now be added another, viz. the absence 
of branches, not including needles, on the eliotated main axis. 
Among sefbral scores of shoots raised in the dark, 90 °/ 0 have 
shown not a single brauch. And those giving rise to branches 
have produced in niost cases bat one on an axis, never more than 4. 
Except for the production of a few needles, the unfolding of branches 
has never gone farther than the primary, save in 3 instances in 
which the primary branches died at the tip and subsequently gave 
rise to secondary. These primary and secondary branches prodnced 
in the dark show no disposition to take the horizontal position as 
they do in the light; rather, they nutate, as do the main axes, 
between the vertical and the horizontal position, and in my ex- 
periments have often assumed the vertical position for periods of 
hours and days. 
A little more numerous than the primary branches on shoots 
raised in the dark are the clusters of needles, as already mentioned 
when discussing the relations of growth toward light. These needles 
in the light spread out in a horizontal plane, but on etiolated plants 
they are stunted and grow ont with a brush-like arrangement, as 
radii of a hemisphere, apparently uncontrolled by gravitation, but 
oriented by the position of the parent shoot and their relation to 
one another. 
VI. Development of Diageotropism on Removal 
of Etiolated Shoots to Light. 
The etiolated shoots of Asparagus preserve their sensitiveness 
toward gravitation and light. In several instances, as already 
stated in this paper, these etiolated shoots have been tested with 
one-sided illumination, and found to make positive heliotropic curves 
within an hour. 
These shoots retain their sensitiveness to gravitation also. 
A shoot that is vertical in the dark quickly bends bends back to 
the vertical when displaced. This was to be expected; but it is 
somewhat remarkable that the divergences which these etiolated, 
nutating shoots make with the vertical are also closely consequent 
on the change in response to gravitation. A shoot may be ne- 
gatively geotropic today, plagiogeotropic tomorrow, and again ne- 
gatively geotropic on the following day. Sixteen shoots confined 
in darkness from 1 to 6 months, and having various positions with 
relation to the direction of gravitation from 0° to 90°, were dis¬ 
placed from these positions. Some of them returned within 24 
hours to their former directions, and the others left their new 
positions for directions more nearly coinciding with their former. 
It is of interest to learn how these etiolated shoots which 
have never been exposed to light and have never developed a 
fixed diageotropic position will behave themselves toward gravitation 
when exposed to light. There have been in my experiments 13 
