Owing to a mis-indexing of the Okl zone, the triclinic cell proposed by Hayashida (J. Phys. Soc. Japan (1962), 17, 306) for octadecane, CIsH3s, is not correct: nor therefore is the structure proposed by him. The error has been corrected and the structure refined from Hayashida's hOl and Okl data. Even after correction, the structure showed some minor anomalies. These we believe are due to inaccuracies in Hayashida's triclinic cell parameters. Good results are obtained using the cell originally proposed by MiJller & Lonsdale (Acta Cryst. (1948), 1, 127), suitably transformed to suit the axial system used by Hayashida, namely, a = 4"28s, b = 4"820, c = 24"898 A, ~ = 85.150, fl= 67.8 and y = 72"70L Space group PI.