The correlation of normal stress with the shear stress and flow birefringence of flowing solutions has been extended to include the recoverable shear strainswhich can be measured directly by a rotational viscometer in ``recoil.'' This has been shown experimentally with solutions of a high‐viscosity nitro‐cellulose inn‐butyl acetate and a viscous polyisobutylene. These results show that the principal axes of the tensors of stress, strain, and optical anistropy coincide, even when no constant shear modulus (shear compliance) exists.