200 A FARMER'S YEAR 



plant. Another jjroof of the vitality of seed prolonged over great 

 periods of time is to be found in the fact that where railway 

 cuttings or other deep trenches are made, flowers and herbage 

 sometimes appear upon the earth thrown out of them different in 

 character from those native to the district. Also I have heard, 

 though of this I have no personal experience, that if dense forest 

 is burnt down in Borneo and some other tropical countries, the 

 growth which comes up is absolutely distinct from that which has 

 been destroyed, which suggests that the seeds producing it were 

 shed before the primaeval forest came into being. 



To my mind, if no satisfactory explanation of the marvel is 

 forthcoming, this is the strangest example of the three, since it is 

 more wonderful that germs should retain life in the damp heat 

 of a tropical forest than in the intense dryness of an Egyptian 

 sepulchre, or when sealed up beneath many feet of stiff clay. 



May II. — Last evening I took the chair at a political meeting 

 in this village, which was well attended and went off satisfac- 

 torily. When we were about two-thirds through it the candidate 

 arrived from some distant place, looking very tired. Remember- 

 ing my own sensations when it came to the point of addressing a 

 third or fourth meeting in the course of a single day, my heart 

 went out to him in sympathy. The man who in middle life 

 abandons the quiet of his home to tear round and round a large 

 extent of country at considerable expense in the hope of winning 

 the privilege of paying a great many subscriptions and sitting up 

 very late at night for more than half the year docs, indeed, 

 deserve the gratitude of those whom he represents, or tries to 

 represent. It is little to be wondered at that, in our part of 

 England at any rate, local gentlemen suited to the task and 

 willing to undertake it are growing rarer every day, the distinction 

 of seeking parliamentary honours being left more and more to 

 pushing barristers, who look upon them as part of the routine of 

 their profession, or to strangers with axes of their own to grind. 



Our meeting was very orderly ; there was nut even any 



