Berkeley’s aid, a few experiments, it was not even known how far seeds could resist the injurious action of seawater. To my surprise I found that out of eighty-seven kinds, sixty-four germinated after an immersion of twenty-eight days, and a few survived an immersion of 137 days. It deserves notice that certain orders were far more injured than others: nine Leguminosae were tried, and, with one exception, they resisted the saltwater badly; seven species of the allied orders, Hydrophyllaceae and Polemoniaceae, were all killed by a month’s immersion. For convenience sake I chiefly tried small seeds without the capsules or fruit; and as all of these sank in a few days, they could not have been floated across wide spaces of the sea, whether or not they were injured by salt water. Afterwards I tried some larger fruits, capsules, etc.