A correlation of mercury absorption with water absorption was investigated by using the perfusion of rat small intestine with buffers containing 10(-4) M HgCl2. With a decrease in the osmolarity of the buffers or with increases in the sodium ion and urea concentrations in the buffers, absorption of water and mercury and accumulation of mercury in the intestinal tissue increased, and the increases in mercury absorption and accumulation were found to correlate with the increase in water absorption. Both the decrease in osmolarity and the increase in sodium ion concentration increased mercury accumulation in the epithelial cell after the perfusion. But these changes did not alter the mercury distribution in subcellular fractions. The results suggest that the increase in water absorption due to the hyptonicity or the increase in concentration of sodium ion or urea increases the mercury absorption and accumulation in the epithelial cell without change in the distributional pattern of mercury in the cell.