Beck on Salt Storms, ¢. | 391 
Admitting the correctness of these experimenis, still it is 
not easy to conceive, how they will account satisfactorily for 
the large quantities of salt found in the air during the storms 
under consideration. 
Whichever of these solutions may be adopted, it is unques- 
tionably a fact that salt does, in some way Or other, exist in 
the atmosphere in the neighborhood of the sea. 
2. The next object of inquiry is, the influence which this 
saline air has upon vegetable life. Independently of the facts 
already stated, there are many others which prove its dele- 
fruit trees do not thrive well, except ata distance of thirty 
miles from the sea, and even the sturdy oak does not extend 
its branches towards the ocean.* If I am correctly informed, 
it was with great difficulty, that the trees on our Battery were 
made to accommodate themselves to a situation so near the 
salt water. It is also well known, that when plants are taken 
to sea, they speedily perish, if exposed but a short time to a 
wind, which is sufficiently strong to turn over the tops of the 
waves into white caps, as they are called by the sailors. 
In order to ascertain positively, whether these effects were 
to be attributed to the operation of salt, I made a solution of 
muriate of soda in common rain water ; with this 1 watered 
for a couple of days the leaves of different plants. In a short 
time they began to dry up, and in a few days were completely 
dead. 
It appears from Volney, that the Egyptian air is strongly 
charged with salts. The evidences of it are to be found even 
at Cairo.t It is this property of the air, which this philoso- 
phical traveller considers, as one of the causes of the rapid 
vegetation in that country. He mentions, however, that exotic 
plants will not thrive there. It is found necessary to renew 
the seeds of them every year. May not this be occasioned 
t Volney’s Travels in Syria and Egypt. Vol. I. p.48. Perth ed. 
om 
