220 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [OCTOBER 
than the anions. This is in accord with the work of PANTANELLI,$ 
who concludes from his extensive researches that salt intake by 
the cells of living plants is an absorption phenomenon of single 
ions, and he attributes the reaction changes of solutions in contact 
with the roots of green plants to the fact that some ions are absorbed 
at a more rapid rate than others. 
That the materials excreted by the seeds in contact with the 
solutions here used can have little influence in bringing about the 
rapid increase in H-ion concentration, is indicated by the fact that 
seeds immersed in distilled water, under conditions similar to those 
under which they were immersed in the single salt solutions, did 
not bring about any marked reaction changes, even when the seeds 
were in contact with the solutions during a period of forty hours. 
This is shown by the data in the last columns of tables I and II. 
The rates at which these reaction changes take place and the 
factors influencing them, together with a study of salt solutions of 
a wider range and of a number of mineral and organic acids will 
be the subject of a later report. 
LABORATORY OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 
N.J. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS 
New Brunswick, N.J. 
5 PaNTANELLI, E., Uber Ionenaufnahme. Pringsheim’s Jahrb. Wiss. Bot. 56: 
689-733. 1915. 
