LATENT LIFE 179 



in the dry seed; it has stopped. The seed is like a 

 watch, stopped but not run down, which a shake 

 might set going again. This view leads one to the 

 reflection that if latent life is an entire suspension 

 of protoplasmic functions, then the period during 

 which revivification is possible should admit of great 

 extension. Now when we inquire into the facts 

 we find that the limits are not usually very long. 

 This suggests, at first sight at least, that what has 

 happened has been an extreme slowing down, not 

 a stoppage of the vital processes or metabolism. 

 Some of the dried Anguillulid worms will not revive 

 after fourteen years, and others not after twenty- 

 one, and there are limits with seeds also. The 

 Sleeping Beauty cannot sleep indefinitely. That 

 distinguished Egyptologist M. Maspero never suc- 

 ceeded in germinating the grains of wheat which 

 he collected in the tombs of the Pharaohs, though 

 frauds practised on the inexpert yielded surprising 

 results. Becquerel's careful experiments showed 

 that some seeds may germinate after resting in 

 a herbarium a hortus siccus indeed for eighty- 

 seven years, but the tenure of latent life is in most 

 cases much more limited. Twenty germinations 

 were got from seeds from twenty-eight to eighty- 

 seven years old, but most were towards the lower 

 figure. Even very tough seeds, which Ewart has 

 called " macrobiotic," do not keep their germinative 

 power much beyond a hundred years. In many 

 cases among plants and animals the limit of latent 

 life is a few years. This seems against Claude 



