Mr. W. Kemp on the Vitality of Seeds. 91 



since, no lake existed here ; and when we reflect on the time ne- 

 cessary to have worn down the barrier of trap-rock and to have 

 drained so large a lake, which must have stood at its highest level 

 whilst the thin layers of sand were deposited over the bed with 

 the vegetable remains, the antiquity of these seeds is truly asto- 

 nishing; and it is most wonderful that they should have re- 

 tained their power of germination. 



As the plants raised are common British weeds, it is indispen- 

 sable that I should detail the precautions which I took, to ascer- 

 tain that they did not come from other seeds, existing in the soil 

 in which they were planted. I first put all the seeds into a 

 tumbler of water, and about one-fourth sunk to the bottom ; of 

 these I planted about three dozen, in parallel rows in flower-pots 

 in my house and some others in the garden ; and I carefully 

 marked each row. Rather more than one dozen of these seeds 

 germinated, so that of the seeds found only about one-tenth part 

 produced plants. I watched from day to day their germination, 

 and saw each little plant bring to the surface the husk of its seed ; 

 and these husks I compared under a microscope with other seeds 

 which I had not planted. None of my plants at first grew vigo- 

 rously. Five or six weeds appeared out of the rows, and these I 

 picked up as they appeared and threw away. Of the two kinds of 

 seeds sent to Professor Lindley, one was pronounced by him to be 

 a Polygonum^ and the other probably a Chenopodium ; this latter 

 genus belongs to the same natural family with Atriplex, and the 

 seeds resemble each other. It is therefore certain that I planted 

 seeds resembling those of Polygonum and Atriplex : now will any 

 one believe, that, in the soil in the garden and likewise in the 

 flower-pot (which in the latter produced only five or six weeds), 

 there were accidentally lying, in exactly the same parallel rows in 

 which I planted my seeds, above a dozen other seeds of these two 

 genera ? I think no one will imagine that this was the case. 

 Moreover, the few seeds planted at the Horticultural Society pro- 

 duced an Atriplex and a Rumex : whether this latter plant was 

 really produced from my seeds I do not know ; but as its trian- 

 gular seeds resemble those of Polygonum, I may have overlooked 

 their difference, and have obtained these two kinds, besides the 

 Atriplex, from the sand quarry. 



I hope that this account, besides establishing the fact that seeds 

 may retain, when naturally preserved, their vitality for enormous 

 periods of time, — from an epoch when the external features of the 

 country were widely different, — will stimulate naturalists to search 

 for seeds in the ancient alluvial deposits of other districts. 



