1 68 
Notes . 
A CORRECTION. — I am extremely sorry that in my paper on the Anatomy 
of the Cone and Fertile Stem of Equisetum in the Annals of Botany for July, 1912, 
I should, by a regrettable oversight, have misquoted Professor Jeffrey. On page 699 
of my paper Professor Jeffrey should be quoted as saying : ‘ It appears to have been 
shown above and beyond any doubt that the equisetaceous strobilus perpetuates both 
the non-alternating strands and the complete absence of foliar gaps of the oldest 
Calamitean forms/ In reproducing this passage, I, by a slip of the pen, wrote 
‘ alternating ’ instead of ' non-alternating ’ ; but, as will be obvious from the subse- 
quent sentences in which I oppose Professor Jeffrey’s conclusion, I had fully realized 
that it was the occasional superposition of the strands of succeeding internodes of the 
cone that he regarded as a survival from the older Calamariae. 
University College, 
London. 
ISABEL BROWNE. 
VARIATIONS IN THE NaCl CONTENT OF NON-HALOPHYTES.— 
When non-halophytic plants are grown at different distances from the sea-coast their 
leaves on analysis exhibit variations in the amount of sodium chloride present 
in them. 
These variations may be due to one or other of two causes, viz. : 
(1) Variations in the amount of sodium chloride present in the soil- water in 
which the plants are grown and carried to the leaves by the transpiration-current ; or 
(2) Variations in the amount of sodium chloride present in the atmosphere and 
absorbed by the leaves directly. 
Czapek (1) refers to such variations as occurring in certain plants cultivated 
both on the sea-coast and at some distance from it. For example, the pure ash 
of the leaves of Beta vulgaris grown on the seashore was found to contain 21-39 P er 
cent, of chlorine, while the ash of the leaves of the same species grown about 
i2-| miles from the shore contained 16-61 per cent, of chlorine. 
With the object of determining to what extent direct absorption by the leaf 
of the sodium chloride in the atmosphere was responsible for the sodium chloride 
content, estimates were made of the amounts present in the leaves of certain non- 
halophytes grown on the sea-coast and also at varying distances from it. 
The plants analysed were Acer Pseudo-platanus, Ulmus ca??ipestris, and Ilex 
Aquifolium. All leaves experimented with were first of all thoroughly and repeatedly 
washed until the water used showed no trace of NaCl when tested with silver nitrate. 
A solution from the leaves was obtained by slowly incinerating a weighed 
amount of leaf substance until a white ash only was left. This ash was washed 
in 100 c.c. of water and the NaCl dissolved out. The amount of NaCl in this 
solution was discovered by titrating it with a ^ solution of silver nitrate, potassium 
chromate being used as an indicator. This solution was acid and so unsuitable for 
titration. Neutralization was effected by the addition of caustic soda, phenolthalein 
being used as a test for alkalinity. 
