Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/118

110 speaks of seeds of the sensitive plant that germinated after more than sixty years of rest. Girardin saw beans germinate that were taken from Tournefort's herbarium, where they had been kept more than a hundred years.

In 1850 Robert Brown, out of curiosity, sowed some seeds from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, of which they had formed a part for more than a hundred and fifty years. He succeeded in making several of them germinate, particularly a seed of Nelumbium speciosum. The plant has been preserved in the galleries of the British Museum, where I saw it a few years ago.

The pretended germination of wheat from mummies is said to be a fable. It seems, besides, that wheat was always sterilized before being introduced into the sarcophagi, so that the possibility of its being brought to life again was excluded in advance. On the other hand, various well-verified facts have demonstrated that seeds may preserve their faculty of germinating after an extremely prolonged abode underground—that is, when sheltered from atmospheric influences. The most extraordinary case of this kind was observed a few years ago by Prof. de Heldereich, director of the Botanical Garden at Athens. While herborizing around the mines of Laurium, this naturalist discovered, in 1875, a glaucium, which he unhesitatingly considered a new species, and described under the name of Glaucium serpieri. The plant had just made its appearance on a tract from which had recently been removed a thick bed of scoria produced in the workings of the mines by the ancients, or at least fifteen hundred years ago. Unless we assume a spontaneous generation, this glaucium must be regarded as a species which existed formerly in the place, the seeds of which had been preserved intact under the protection of the ground and the scoria that covered them.

Many instances are mentioned in which the opening of deep trenches or the clearing of forests has been followed by the appearance of species formerly unknown in the place. Prof. Peter, of Göttingen, has very recently made a long series of methodical researches, the results of which are of great interest. His method consists in collecting specimens of forest earth, the age and all the anterior conditions of which are fully known. He cultivates them, taking all precautions against introducing foreign seeds. These specimens of earth are always taken from