transmitted effect of excitatory electric change of galvanometric negativity, which at the favourable season of the year was of sufficient intensity to be recorded by a sensitive galvanometer. A long strand of the conducting tissue was taken and two electric connections were made with a galvanometer, a few centimetres from the free ends. Thermal stimulus was applied at the middle, when two excitatory waves with their concomitant electric changes were transmitted outwards. By suitably moving the point of application of stimulus nearer or further away from one of the two electric contacts, an exact balance was obtained. This was the case when the resultant galvanometer deflection was reduced to zero. If now an electrical current be sent along the length of the conducting tissue, the two excitatory waves sent outwards from the central stimulated point will encounter the electric current in different ways; one of the excitatory waves will travel with, and the other against the direction of the current. If the power of transmitting excitation is modified by the direction of an electric current then the magnitudes of transmitted excitations will be different in the two cases, with the result of the upsetting of the Conductivity Balance. From the results of experiments carried out by this method on the effect of feeble current on conductivity, the conclusion was arrived at that excitation is better conducted against the direction of the current than with it. In other words, the influence of an electric current is to confer a preferential or selective direction of conductivity for excitation, the tissue becoming a better conductor in an electric up-hill direction compared with a down-hill.
The results were so unexpected that I have for long been desirous of testing the validity of this conclusion by independent method of inquiry. I shall presently give full account of the perfected method, and the various difficulties which had to be overcome to render it practical. Before doing
