ON THE GERMINATION OE SEEDS. 131 



nists, who would have been far more capable of doing it efficiently 

 than myself; and I now find that M. Alph. DeCandolle, in his 

 admirable work, " Greographie Botanique," regrets that such 

 experiments have not been tried; I think, that had he known 

 even the few facts here to be recorded, some of his opinions on 

 the means of distribution of particular families would have been 

 slightly modified. The Bev. M. J. Berkeley has likewise tested 

 fifty-three different kinds of seeds, and has published a report in 

 the " Gardener's Chronicle*," to which periodical I have also 

 sent two brief notices on the same subject f- I intend here to 

 give, with Mr. Berkeley's kind permission, an account of our joint 

 experiments. I may premise, that not knowing, at first, whether 

 the seeds would endure even a week's immersion, I selected a few 

 by simple chance, taking, however, the seeds of different families ; 

 subsequently I have been aided by suggestions from Dr. Hooker. 

 I must briefly describe how my experiments were tried: the 

 seeds were placed in small bottles, each holding two or three 

 ounces of salt water, carefully made according to Schweitzer's 

 analysis : as both algm and marine animals have, as is well known, 

 long survived in water thus made, there can be no doubt that the 

 experiment was thus fairly tried. Mr. Berkeley sent his seeds to 

 Bamsgate, tied up in little bags and placed in the sea- water, daily 

 renewed ; and they were thus immersed for three weeks, and when 

 partially dried, but still damp, were sent off, but by accident were 

 not unpacked for four days subsequently, so that their total im- 

 mersion " was equivalent to one of more than a month." Some 

 of my bottles were put out of doors in the shade, and were ex- 

 posed to an average weekly temperature of from 35° to 57° ; the 

 other bottles were kept in my cellar, and were exposed to much 

 less variation of temperature, viz. to a daily mean average of 

 from 46° to 56°. Further, to test the effect of temperature, I 

 immersed eighteen different sorts of seeds in salt water, in a tank, 

 which, from containing much snow, was for six weeks at the tem- 

 perature of 32°, slowly rising for the next six weeks to 44° ; but 

 the seeds thus tested did not seem to withstand the injurious 

 effect of the salt water better than those exposed to a higher but 

 variable temperature. I may remark, that amongst the eighteen 

 kinds of seeds immersed in the cold salt water, there were seeds 

 of a somewhat tender constitution, as capsicum and vegetable 

 marrow, but the exposure to the cold in no degree injured their 

 germination. In the case of some of the seeds which I first tried, 

 * Sept. 1st, 1855. f May 26th and Nov. 24th, 1855. 



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