438 On the Preservation of Seeds, the Use of Lime in 
of years, upon every subsequent turning over of the surface, 
regularly diminishing in numbers, but did not entirely disappear 
for a series of years. These plants must have been produced 
from seed of the brocoli completely fructified even in embryo, 
and while yet in flower, and in this very early stage of maturi- 
zation, having acquired all the requisite principles to preserve and 
fortify it against corruption. I am of opinion that these germs 
might have remained in a quiescent state of complete preserva- 
tion for myriads of ages, had nothing occurred to disturb their 
repose, ready to burst their fetters at any future period of the 
world, on being turned up to the vivifying light of the sun, and 
pour forth their foliage and flower in gratitude to their original 
creator and all-powerful preserver. 
I remember a cart loaded with lime, hot from the kiln, acci- 
dentally breaking down while passing through Auchmoor. Not 
to impede the road, the lime shells were removed from the cart 
and laid on a spot adjoining, closely covered with moss and short 
bushy heather. Before another cart could be procured to carry 
off the lime, a heavy shower fell, and had considerably slacked 
the shells. Notwithstanding all the care in gathering it up, a 
portion ofthe dusty mineral was unavoidably lost, and remained 
amongst the moss and roots of the heather. Subsequent rains 
washed it completely into the turf. The moss and heath were 
soon destroyed, and finally died away. The frosts of the fol- 
lowing winter opened the surface soil; succeeding thaws and 
rains washed the lime into the softened earth, dissolving and 
sinking deeper and deeper by every returning shower, till the 
lime, completely mixed and neutralized with the soil, having 
laid bare the once moss-grown and heath-covered spot, now 
gave birth to a more congenial race, which was soon seen pour- 
ing forth, and still continues to teem with an overflowing vege- 
tation of all the richest grasses of the climate, intermixed with 
native white clover of the sweetest flavour. The fresh-burnt 
lime could neither contain nor communicate the germs of this 
vegetable race. Their primitive identity must have previously 
lived in this soil, but become dormant by the germs being hid 
under the matted turf, and the all-animating rays of light and 
heat (which I am inclined to consider only separate terms for 
the same vivific substance) completely debarred and excluded 
by the thick covering of moss and heather, now removed by the 
renovating action of the mineral. 
Many of the greatest acquisitions now possessed by man, and 
improved by intelligence and industry, have been of accidental 
discovery ; and some such occurrence as the foregoing must first 
have laid open to human view the meliorating quality and great 
importance of lime to the progressive improvements in agricul- 
ture, 
