THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1912. MUMMY WHEAT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10683, 10 July 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1912. MUMMY WHEAT.

The ger.ininatbu of mumimy wheat is <a fable that dies hard, almost as ■hard, indeed, as would the grains tf.ienxdives if what is so widely believed of them .were true. The idea that gaaiiiß cf wheat taken from the mummy case cf one Blame-soy, who died and ,was burftd about -IG€O years ago, wilt sprout and grow into plants, as, in the opinion of the Chiistehurch "Press," •so utterly oppesc-d to the experience of everyone who has kept yaeds for' a few yjea.rs, that its mere

acceptance is astonishing, wliiCe its .vitality testifies to the willingr.ieGs with which many people allow themselves to b? deceiv'ed. lit is curious, too, to foam that the circumstances which should make them most suspicious, simply strengthens their crediility. Tliey ihave been- told that in isomtv respects the Egypt of to-day is the Egypt of the captivity—that is, so far as the dress and customs of many of the peasantry are concerned.. Therefore, when they a.re told that the plant springing from "mummy wheat" is exactly similar to the will oat grown m Egypt to-day, they regard it ais another proof of the way in which Egypt ilias stood still. They omiit fo take into account tho poss:- , Ability that the two wheats look the ! (same (because -tihoy are tho same— wi other words, tlut the "mummy wheat" was taken a few months previously from some neighbouring patch. A report just published by Mr Cadn-uthors, the botanist of the British .Royal A,gncrJ!t.ural Society, should., howevcir, 'help to dispel the prevailing ignorance. Sixteen years ago Mr Gamithcr.s made a collection of forty-three .sorts of seeds, including ■seventeen 'grasses, twelve clovers, six cereals, and a ninribeV of others. He kept them in a dark, warm, dry place, isowing a few of each annually, and to-day not one live »?ed remains. No ■wheat or ibarley grow after the tenth year, and for five years previously.

gen-urination had been growing increaOTigly difficult. The white outs continued to sprout for amo years longer, but at t'ho end of tihe fourteenth year they had aM died. The grass seeds all died between the 'Eighth and thirteenth years; d the clovers, tlic red retained ite .vitality for ton years only, nd the wiliers for a little longer/«.r.d the- : ivv\::\) seed wr.s usck-r.':; after tl'ie twelfth Of course tho ! perecnt,ige> of germination, became Hiialicr ,Mar r,i'ttr year in each ease. It is that wheat grown in tho dryer if.in.uto i,f Kigvpt might majntain the gcem alive longer than. English wheat, hut the difference would not be nun? th.Mi. a few years.