46 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 
Standards in Paris. They are to be tested every 10 years, 
and ultimately we may know how nearly seeds are immortal. 
Since plants unquestionably have appeared in regions where 
they were previously unknown, after the soil had been opened 
up by digging or dredging, it was concluded that the seed 
must have been preserved alive for very long periods, because 
buried more or less deeply in the earth. Of course there has 
never been adequate supervision of such cases, and invariably 
it has been found that the plants recorded as appearing under 
such conditions do not have particularly long-lived seed, at 
least when preserved in air. Rather extensive experiments 
have further demonstrated that it is not true that seeds pre- 
serve their vitality longer if buried in the soil, but that they 
will keep much better in air if perfectly dry. 
The appearance of unusual plants in regions cleared by 
forest fires has been regarded as another evidence of the ex- 
treme viability of seed. While it is true that some seed which 
have lain dormant in the earth for a considerable length of 
time may be germinated through the heating of the ground, 
there is no authority for the idea that plants originating under 
such circumstances have come from seed which have lain in 
the soil an extraordinary length of time. The possibility of 
their being carried by birds or other animals, or by wind or 
flood cannot be disregarded. 
Pine seeds are notoriously long-lived. Some trees, such as 
Pinus attenuata and P. radiata, 30 or 40 years old, may still 
retain unopened all the cones they have produced. In such 
eases the cones may not shed their seeds until the tree or 
branch that bears them dies. In 1874 Dr. Engelmann collected 
a branch of P. contorta from Colorado and after keeping it 
in St. Louis for 414 years, he sent it to Professor Sargent 
of the Arnold Arboretum to test the seeds. The results showed 
that at least some seeds of this species are capable of germina- 
tion after retention in the cones for 10 years, and experi- 
ments conducted in the seed laboratory of the United States 
Department of Agriculture demonstrated that seeds of this 
same pine 30 years of age were still capable of germination. 
All investigators are agreed that the viability of ordinarily 
dried seed is quite unaffected by exposure to extreme cold. 
What was regarded as a most remarkable fact at the time was 
the finding in January, 1899, by some members of the Peary 
arctic expedition, of seeds abandoned by Lieutenant Greely 
