In order to clarify whether or not the electronegative olfactory mueosal potentials (EOG) are generator potentials, the effects of changed ionic enviroment were studied. The EOG decreased in amplitude and in some cases nearly or completely disappeared, when Na + in the bathing Ringer solution was replaced .by sucrose, Li +, choline +, tetraethylammoninm + (TEA), or hydrazine. In the K+-free Ringer solution, the negative EOG's initially increased and then decreased in amplitude, In Ringer's solution with increased K +, the negative EOG's increased in amplitude. When K + was increased in exchange for Na + in Ringer's solution, the negative EOG's decreased, disappeared, and then reversed their polarity (Fig. 6). Next, when the K + was replaced by equimolar sucrose, Li +, choline +, TEA+, hydrazine, or Na +, the reversed potentials recovered completely only in Na+-Ringer's solution, but never in the other solutions, Thus, the essential role of Na + and K + in the negative EOG's was demonstrated. Ba ++ was found t ° depress selectively the electropositive EOG, but it hardly :decreased and never increased the negative EOG. Hence, it is concluded that Ba ++ interferes only with CI-influx, and that the negative EOG's are elicited by an increase in permeability of the olfactory receptive membrane to Na + and K +, but not to CA-. From the ionic mechanism it is inferred that the negative EOG's are in most eases composites of generator and positive potentials.Since the pioneer work by Hosoya and Yoshida (1937) in the dog, and by Ottoson (1954Ottoson ( , 1956 in the rabbit and frog, the electrical phenomena elicited in the olfactory epithelium by application of odors have been extensively studied and much new information has been obtained. Besides the electronegative slow potentials of the " o n " type found by the above workers, and named "electro-olfactogram ( E O G ) " by Ottoson (1956), electronegative po-