174 LUTHER BURBANK 



These experiments, then, although they mark 

 merely the beginning of a new line of research, 

 are interesting in their suggestiveness. And it 

 occurs to me that the case of the nineteen-year- 

 old tomato seeds may have a bearing on the 

 same subject. 



It would be well worth while to conduct a 

 systematic line of experiments in which seed of 

 a fixed species is stored in large quantity, and 

 a certain proportion planted each year, careful 

 record being made of the characteristics of the 

 successive groups of plants, with an eye to any 

 modifications that may occur when the seed 

 approaches the limit of the term through which 

 it can maintain vitality under the conditions 

 given it. 



It is said that there are records of wheat: 

 germinating after it had been preserved for cen- 

 turies in the tombs of Egypt, although there is 

 no proof of this; but most seeds have far more 

 restricted capacities for maintaining vitality. 

 My experiment suggests about twenty years as 

 the limit for the tomato seed under fairly good 

 condition. So the seeds of some fixed type of 

 tomato might very well be among those selected 

 for such an experiment as that just suggested, 



My own observations in the matter are chiefly 

 confined to what has just been related to the 



