Some experiments were made by immersing cut-off leaves in solutions of
different strengths. Thus four leaves were left for about 3 hrs. each
in a drachm (3.549 ml.) of a solution of one part of the carbonate to
5250 of water; two of these had almost every tentacle inflected, the
third had about half the tentacles and the fourth about one-third
inflected; and all the glands were blackened. Another leaf was placed
in the same quantity of a solution of one part to 7000 of water, and in
1 hr. 16 m. every single tentacle was well inflected, and all the
glands blackened. Six leaves were immersed, each in thirty minims
(1.774 ml.) of a solution of one part to 4375 of water, and the glands
were all blackened in 31 m. All six leaves exhibited some slight
inflection, and one was strongly inflected. Four leaves were then
immersed in thirty minims of a solution of one part to 8750 of water,
so that each leaf received the 1/320 of a grain (.2025 mg.). Only one
became strongly inflected; but all the glands on all the leaves were of
so dark a red after one hour as almost to deserve to be called black,
whereas this did not occur with the leaves which were at the same time
immersed in water; nor did water produce this effect on any other
occasion in nearly so short a time as an hour. These cases of the
simultaneous darkening or blackening of the glands from the action of
weak solutions are important, as they show that all the glands absorbed
the carbonate within the same time, which fact indeed there was not the
least reason to doubt. So again, whenever all the [page 145] tentacles
become inflected within the same time, we have evidence, as before
remarked, of simultaneous absorption. I did not count the number of
glands on these four leaves; but as they were fine ones, and as we know
that the average number of glands on thirty-one leaves was 192, we may
safely assume that each bore on an average at least 170; and if so,
each blackened gland could have absorbed only 1/54400 of a grain
(.00119 mg.) of the carbonate.
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