Note 65 — Art. XIII. Observations on Salt Storms, and the Influence of Salt and Saline Air upon Animal and Vegetable Life.
Reading edition
To prove that salt is absorbed into land plants growing near the sea, the following facts, for which I am indebted to my friend, Dr. D. V. Knevels, are conclusive. The fruit of those cocoa-nut trees which grow near the seashore in the West-Indies is generally found to have a saltish taste; and even the milk in the nut is perceptibly impregnated with it. Those trees on the contrary which grow in the interior, beyond the influence of salt water, have their fruit perfectly fresh and sweet.
The same gentleman informs me, that in a plantation of his father's, in the West-Indies, situated on the seashore, a whole crop of the cane was rendered unfit for the purpose of making sugar, in consequence of the great quantity of salt which it had imbibed.