*¢ Questions addressed to Naturalists.” 441 
metry of its parent plant, and of reproducing its kind. In no- 
thing does the protecting hand of Providence show solicitude more 
conspicuously than in the formation of the seeds and preservation 
of vegetable life; every seed is covered with a shell—a coat of 
mail to shield it from external injury; and as the vegetable egg 
is left without the fostering care of a watchful parent, its shell 
has the power of absorbing and giving out moisture, of dilating 
and contracting as the state of its charge may require; and al- 
though originally a mere vegetable pulp, yet its constituent prin- 
ciples are furnished with powers of defence, capable of resisting, 
uninjured, the utmost effects of animal digestion, even of those 
animals whose gastric energies are sufficient to dissolve the hardest 
bones. In proof of this, 1 may state two instances that must 
be familiar to every one. Pease fully ripened, and allowed to 
harden in the pod, if swallowed whole, will defy the strongest 
digestive powers, pass through the intestines, and grow. Let 
the hardened pease be boiled till the farina is reduced to pulp, 
still the shell of the pea will remain undissolved ; and although 
taken into the stomach, with all this previous preparation of 
boiling, the shell will yet resist the utmost efforts of animal diges- 
tion, and pass through the intestines unaltered. Thin as the 
bran of wheat may be, that shell is sufficient to defend the grain 
against the digestive powers of the horse. Whew taken unbruised 
into the stomach of that noble animal, the grain passes through his 
entrails, not only uninjured and fit for vegetation, but will be found 
to have absorbed a fertilizing principle, and to produce more 
luxuriant foliage, and better grain, than when sown in its natural 
state. If seeds resist animal digestion, the natives of East Fries- 
land and the Querists may cease to wonder at their dormancy 
for any length of time. Not to repeat any of my notes (see Phil. 
Mag. for December 1818), I may be allowed to state another 
instance of seeds retaining their germinating principle, that has 
since occurred. 
On clearing out the Monk barns of an old religious establish- 
ment in the North, and subjecting the site to the operations of the 
plough, several varieties of oats sprung up the succeeding spring, 
that have long been unknown in the country, whose seed must have 
been carried by mice or rats, &c. deep into their burrows as 
winter store. The collectors of this latent repository may have 
perished by the eats, the weasels, or the ¢raps of the Holy Fathers, 
and their little store remained unconsumed. These oats must 
have retained their vegetating powers (since the days of John 
o’ the Girnal*) at least for some hundred vears. If for hun- 
dreds, why not for thousands? and if for thousands, why not for 
ever?! ! 
* See The Antiquary. 
Vol, 58. No, 284, Dec. 1821, 3K Many 
