THE VITALITY OF SEEDS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2230, 23 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE VITALITY OF SEEDS.

A. great sensation wa9 created some years ago by the report of the germination of mummy wheat, it having been assumed that the seed had been preserved in a coffin for about three thousand year*. The bubble has at last been pricked by Professor Bentley, who is lecturing at the Royal Botanical Society's Museum on the physiology of plants. He asserted with absolute confidence that no grain which had been certainly identified as contemporaneous -with tho deposit of the corpse has ever yet sprouted. Tho experiment has been tried again and again without success, although it is true that cereals have been raised from seed found in a mummy's coffin. That sped had been introduced by some moans not long before the exhumation of the body. But he would not take upon himself to fix any time as a distinct limit to the survival of vitality in seeds. Not many will germinate under ordinary circumstances after the third year ; very few after the fourth. Peaa and beans are the moat tenacious of life. The lotus has been known to grow after a hundred years, but there is scarcely another instance. He admitted, however, that if grains are buried deep, or otherwise protected sufficiently, they seem to survive for an indefinite time. I think the professor rather underrates the vitality of s^eds. I vouch for it, from my own observation, as a fact, that, after a bush firo in Australia, the trees burnt down are succeeded by others of quite a different family, and none of the new trees grew in the locality previous to the occurrence of the fire. I do not say that this is always the case— l only speak of what I have aeon ; but I have heard the same remark made by others. The only possible inference ia that the seeds of the new trees came from a pre-existing forest in the sime locality— how long before it is impossible to guess. The professor is, however, no doubt right about tho luummy wheat.— (Elipus, in The Leader.