A CASE OF PERSISTENT VITALITY IN SEEDS. 



By BURNET LANDRETH. 



{Read January 19, igo6.) 



Mr. Watson, Curator Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, published 

 in the Gardeners' Chronicle of the eleventh of February, 1905, his 

 opinion that seeds hermetically sealed were injured in vitality. No 

 doubt he is correct to a degree, but commercially he is wrong, as 

 those merchants practically engaged in shipping seeds through, or 

 to, damp climates, as via the Suez Canal to India, have had just 

 the opposite experience as compared with seeds not hermetically 

 sealed. 



The advantage of air-tight containers for the transportation 

 through, or the keeping of seeds, in tropical countries, has also been 

 proven nearer home, as, not only in Central America and Mexico, 

 but in our own states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, where it 

 is well known that seeds not hermetically sealed will lose 50 per cent, 

 to 60 per cent., and even 70 per cent., of vitality in a single summer; 

 in the language of the southern seedsman, " they sweat to death." 



But just here is a novel record as respects exposed seeds in a 

 dry and arctic climate, an incident without any paralleling features 

 as to a prolongation of vitality. 



The seeds referred to, if kept at Bloomsdale Farm, where they 

 were grown, through the period of sixteen years, would not have 

 possessed any vitality, while in this case, under a continuously low 

 temperature, one of the two varieties saved, the radish, grew up 

 to 50 per cent, upon being returijed to the United States ; this, I 

 infer, from the complete arresting of transpiration in the dry and 

 cold atmosphere of the very far north. 



This is a record of scientific interest, a contribution to the store 

 of vegetable physiology, a demonstration never before attainable, 

 and not likely ever again to be repeated. It is, and will remain, 

 unique. 



The following is the statement of Dr. Dedrick of the Peary 

 Expedition of 1901 : 



