50 THOREA U. 



land, from which the fruit was annually carried to 

 market. How much further inland they grow, I 

 know not. Dr. Charles T. Jackson speaks of finding 

 &quot; beach-plums &quot; (perhaps they were this kind) more 

 than one hundred miles inland in Maine. 



It chances that similar objections lie against all the 

 more notorious instances of the kind on record. 



Yet I am prepared to believe that some seeds, espe 

 cially small ones, may retain their vitality for centu 

 ries under favorable circumstances. In the spring of 

 1859, the old Hunt House, so called, in this town, 

 whose chimney bore the date 1703, was taken down. 

 This stood on land which belonged to John Winthrop, 

 the first governor of Massachusetts, and a part of the 

 house was evidently much older than the above date, 

 and belonged to the Winthrop family. For many 

 years I have ransacked this neighborhood for plants, 

 and I consider myself familiar with its productions. 

 Thinking of the seeds which are said to be sometimes 

 dug up at an unusual depth in the earth, and thus to 

 reproduce long extinct plants, it occurred to me last 

 fall that some new or rare plants might have sprung 

 up in the cellar of this house, which had been covered 

 from the light so long. Searching there on the 22d 

 of September, I found, among other rank weeds, a 

 species of nettle (Urtica urens), which I had not 

 found before; dill, which I had not seen growing 

 spontaneously ; the Jerusalem oak, which I had seen 

 wild in but one place; black nightshade, which is 

 quite rare hereabouts ; and common tobacco, which, 

 though it was often cultivated here in the last century, 

 has for fifty years been an unknown plant in this 

 town, and a few months before this not even I had 

 heard that one man in the north part of the town 



