244 



BOTANY 



[Chap. X 



Letter 576 perhaps you will be so kind as to communicate the result 

 to me, and not to any periodical. The chance, though 

 appearing so impossible, of recovering a plant lost to any 

 country if not to the world, appears to me so very interesting, 

 that 1 hope you will think it worth while to have these seeds 

 planted, and not returned to me. 



Letter 577 _ „ » 



b// To C. Lyell. 



[Sept., 1843.] 

 An interesting fact has lately, as it were, passed through 

 my hands. A Mr. Kemp (almost a working man), who has 

 written on " parallel roads," and has corresponded with me, 1 

 sent me in the spring some seeds, with an account of the 

 spot where they were found, namely, in a layer at the bottom 

 of a deep sand pit, near Melrose, above the level of the river, 

 and which sand pit he thinks must have been accumulated in 

 a lake, when the whole features of the valleys were different, 

 ages ago ; since which whole barriers of rock, it appears, 

 must have been worn down. These seeds germinated freely, 

 and I sent some to the Horticultural Society, and Lindley 

 writes to me that they turn out to be a common Rumex and 

 a species of A triplex, which neither he nor Henslow (as I 

 have since heard) have ever seen, and certainly not a British 

 plant ! Does this not look like a vivification of a fossil 

 seed ? It is not surprising, I think, that seeds should last 

 ten or twenty thousand [years], as they have lasted two or 

 three [thousand years] in the Druidical mounds, and have 

 germinated. 



When not building, I have been working at my volume 

 on the volcanic islands which we visited ; it is almost ready 

 for press. ... I hope you will read my volume, for, if you 

 don't, I cannot think of anyone else who will ! We have at 

 last got our house and place tolerably comfortable, and I am 

 well satisfied with our anchorage for life. What an autumn 

 we have had : completely Chilian ; here we have had not a 

 drop of rain or a cloudy day for a month. I am positively 

 tired of the fine weather, and long for the sight of mud almost 

 as much as I did when in Peru. 



1 In a letter to Henslow, Darwin wrote : " If he [Mr. Kemp] had not 

 shown himself a most careful and ingenious observer, I should have 

 tnought nothing of the case." 



