546 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
bean, and myself for seeds of pumpkin, peas, and buckwheat, which 
lost 10 to 14 per cent of their weight of water. 
Now, are seeds artificially dried more readily altered, or do they 
conserve longer than others their power of germination ? 
According to my investigations, the seeds of pumpkin, castor bean, 
and beans, thoroughly dried, preserved in darkness in a dry atmos- 
phere of air or nitrogen are not oxidized. I have been unable to 
detect by analysis the slightest Indication of absorption of oxygen or 
release of carbon dioxide. Likewise, according to Maquenne, dried 
parsnip seeds preserved for two years in a vacuum had suffered no 
loss of their germinative power, while seeds preserved in the open 
air as checks had been dead a long time. 
These parsnip seeds, losing their power of germination at the end 
of six months, had therefore, as a consequence of their dehydration 
and their protection from oxidation, quadrupled the duration of 
their latent life. Upon the basis of these results, Maquenne concludes 
that cellular respiration is arrested in a vacuum, and that under the 
influence of desiccation the seed passes from a state of relaxed life 
to a state of suspended life in which vegetative functions cease to be 
performed. This conclusion, which is supported by all my above- 
mentioned researches, appears to agree well with the facts. But 
many physiologists, partisans of the theory of the continuity of vital 
phenomena, are unwilling to accept it. 
They oppose the following objections? 
In this matter of gaseous exchanges, especially if they are intracellular, how can 
you prove whether they are slight or negative? What leads you to believe that 
your methods of analysis are satisfactory evidence? There where your judgment 
hesitates, your theory affirms. It maintains a priori that the process of assimilation 
neither suffers, nor stops, nor begins again, but follows a continuous march. 
Obviously it is very difficult to prove a complete arrest of the phe- 
nomena of life in the organism in a state of latent life. However, it 
must be acknowledged that the vacuum and the dehydration, carried 
to the extreme limit, should signally retard the exchanges of matter 
and energy in the protoplasm. If to these two conditions, already 
very influential, there be added a third, that of low temperatures, will 
not the suspension of life be really accomplished experimentally ? 
VII. THE INFLUENCE OF LOW TEMPERATURES. 
The influence of low temperatures on seeds and on spores of 
bacteria has been studied for 30 years by a number of investigators, 
chief among whom are Raoul) Pictet, Casimir de Candolle, Brown and 
Escombe, Dyer, and MacFadyen. These scientists have proved that 
1 Paul Becquerel: Sur les échanges gazeux des graines. C, R. Acad. des Sc., Dec. 10, 1906. 
2 Dastre, La vie et la mort, p. 226 (Flammarion, Paris). M. Dastre, whom I have consulted on this 
subject, now accepts my point of view.—(Note of M. P. B.) 
