VITALITY OF SEEDS. 21 



who planted it and grew therefrom three kinds of 

 wheat different from any that Mr. Wilkes had ever 

 seen. 



A writer in the Country Gentleman for 1888, 

 quotes from a recent paper read before an English 

 society oa the vitality of mummy wheat, in which 

 it was stated that no fewer than fifty-nine species 

 of flowering plants, raised from mummy wrappings 

 in Egypt, had been identified. 



In one instance "a sarcophagus was brought from 

 Egypt by the Duke of Sutherland; and seeds which 

 were taken from it, being planted, germinated." 



The late Professor Alexander Winchell quotes 

 Lord Lindsay as saying that he found a bulb in the 

 hands of a mummy at least 2000 years old, and 

 that it grew and produced a Dahlia. But the 

 Dahlia does not grow from a bulb, is a Mexican 

 plant, and was not known to botanists until 1789. 

 Another account of this case by Rogers in his 

 "Scientific Agriculture' speaks of it as a "root" 

 being so found. This might do, if the Dahlia had 

 been known in Egypt at the time indicated. 



These and other instances of the supposed 

 growth of seeds taken from the Egyptian cata- 

 combs have been published in nearly every agricul- 

 tural journal and work on agriculture for the past 

 fifty years, and have been accepted even by good 

 authorities in science, including Doctor Carpenter 



