DORMANT SEEDS AND SPORES. 301 



usually soon covered with a dense growth of pines or spruces, 

 even in cases where there would seem to be no opportunity for 

 a recent seeding of the tract. In the town of Pauton, Vermont, 

 it is said that formerly cultivated lands, allowed to remain 

 fallow, soon became furnished with a fine crop of hickory, 

 although none was known to grow among the native forests 

 within fifty miles. All such instances, however, require to be 

 received with some allowance, as a portion of tiie truth is very 

 likely to be concealed from the knowledge of the observer, upon 

 whose testimony these extraordinary statements are made. It 

 is quite as probable, to say the least, that one or more trees of 

 hickory were hidden among the forests near the land from 

 which the new crop sprang, and that the nuts were scattered by 

 ground squirrels and mice, as that the living nuts could have 

 lain unobserved and torpid during the cultivation of the fields, 

 as well as for untold ages before. When we consider that a 

 single tobacco plant produces fifty thousand seeds, a large elm- 

 tree more than half a million, and a giant puff-ball thousands 

 of millions of spores, enough in fact to stock the whole earth, 

 and when we recollect how readily and widely they may be 

 scattered by natural causes, we shall hesitate somewhat about 

 believing that the soil is so full of ancient germs retaining their 

 vitality as some would have us think. 



Will not some zealous microscopist turn his attention to this 

 . interesting subject and search for seeds and spores in the soil 

 and subsoil of our forests and meadows, and, having found them, 

 endeavor to develop tiiem into thriving plants ? The facts are 

 certainly sufficient to warrant a thorough investigation, though 

 in all probability the cases of seeds thus buried and retaining their 

 power of germination would prove to be altogether exceptional. 



Spores are minute vesicles or cells consisting of a double 

 envelope of cellulose filled with a vital fluid, and capable of 

 germinating under favorable circumstances. Theoretically they 

 seem rather detached cells than organized buds or seeds. A bud 

 or seed always begins its growth at a particular well defined 

 point, but the spore is alike on all sides, and puslies out its 

 young radicle from the under part towards its supply of food. 

 The tens of thousands of flowerless plants, such as ferns, mosses, 

 algaj, fungi and lichens, produce spores and are propagated by 

 them, just as flowering plants are by seeds. Spores of terrestrial 



