6 LANDRETH~A CASE OF [January 19 



" Washington, New Jersey, 



" 15th November, 1905. 

 ** Mr. Burnet Landreth, 



''Dear Sir: — The incidents of the finding of certain seeds aban- 

 doned by Lieutenant Greely at Fort Conger, 490 miles from the 

 pole, were as follows : 



" In January, 1899, the expedition of Lieutenant Peary, of 

 which I was surgeon, discovered Fort Conger, 81° 44', or about 

 490 miles from the pole. This station was abandoned in 1883, six- 

 teen years, and among the articles reclaimed by the Peary party 

 were a lot of seeds in packages bearing your name. These seeds 

 were sealed up in the usual flat paper packets as issued by your 

 establishment (I send you some of the identical seed packets) and 

 were found in an open box in the loft or attic of Fort Conger, 

 where they had rested sixteen years, well sheltered from rain and 

 snow, but exposed to a winter temperature of 60° to 70° below zero. 



" In April, 1899, with the seeds in my possession, we journeyed 

 by sledge over the ice some 300 miles south to our ship, from whence 

 I sent the seeds home that season, where they remained unplanted 

 until the spring of 1905. 



" The seeds from two of these packets, one of lettuce and one of 

 radish, I planted in my garden at Washington, New Jersey. The 

 lettuce seed failed entirely to germinate, but about one half of the 

 radish seeds germinated and reached perfection in size, and even 

 reproduced seed. The photograph which I enclose was taken from 

 one of the roots, grown during the summer of 1905, after it had 

 reached full development, and the seeds sent you are the produce 

 of the same roots. 



*' This retention of germinative force, under the conditions of 

 sixteen winters of exceedingly low temperature (we found it 70° 

 below zero at Fort Conger) and during the five years subsequently 

 when brought back to the United States, twenty-one years in the 

 total, is to me most extraordinary, and this record is another added 

 to the many valuable contributions to science made by Lieutenant 

 Peary's four years' expedition. 



" Thomas S. Dedrick, M.D." 



Explanatory of the taking of the seeds to the far north, is the 



