ABSORPTION OF SODIUM AND CALCIUM BY WHEAT 
: SEEDLINGS’ 
HowarRp 8S. REED 
(WITH ONE FIGURE) 
Sea water, mammalian blood, and certain artificial solutions in 
which living cells are immersed are capable of continuing the life 
of those cells for considerable periods of time. These so-called 
“balanced solutions” may contain different ions which, separately, 
have a marked deleterious effect upon the cell, but which, when 
present in certain proportions, “balance” or “antagonize’’ each 
other. The result is that organisms live normally in such solutions. 
There are two ways in which the mixture of ions or molecules 
in a balanced solution may overcome cytolytic factors: (1) by 
“antagonizing”? each other, that is, by opposing and mutually 
excluding each other at the surface of the plasmatic bodies or 
other units of living structure; (2) by producing in the organism 
such a state of “tolerance,” that is, by producing effects on the 
intracellular complexes, either alone or in conjunction with each 
other, that the harmful effects of single ions or molecules are 
eliminated. Or, in other words, the antagonism of ions may be 
either peripheral or internal. 
Until recently the majority of physiologists were inclined to the 
former view, a view which was clearly stated in TRAUBE’S “sieve 
theory of permeability’ and in Overton’s “‘lipoid-solubility”’ 
theory. Of the many objections to these two theories and to their 
various modifications, none was more cogent than that based on 
the fact that, even in a balanced solution, ions do slowly enter the 
cell. Indeed, if such were not the case, it would be impossible for 
the cell to obtain the salts necessary for its existence. 
The objections to the former ideas of “antagonism” and 
“tolerance” have largely been met by a theory of antagonism pro- 
* Paper 47, from the University of California, Graduate School of Tropical Agri- 
culture and Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside, California. 
Botanical Gazette, vol. 66] (374 
