THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 533 



account of the high reputation of the botanist who relates 

 it, is that which is mentioned by Lindley. This savant as- 

 sures us that seeds of the raspberry, which had been taken 

 from a Celtic burying-ground dating about seventeen hun- 

 dred years back, having been sown in the garden of the 

 Horticultural Society of London, produced bushes of their 

 species, which are still to be seen. 



But life seems to make a still longer stay in the embryo 

 of some other plants. Many learned men maintain that 

 grains of wheat of such antiquity as to go back to the epoch 

 of the Pharaohs have germinated and yielded a harvest 

 after having been intrusted to the earth ! They had been 

 found in Egyptian bury ing-places by the side of mummies, 

 and thus, in all probability, had been reaped on the borders 

 of the Nile three or four thousand years ago. 1 



According to some English botanists, the bulb of the mar- 

 itime squill presents a longevity not less extraordinary. 



Being the object of a special worship in ancient Egypt, 

 where temples were even reared to it, this sacred plant was 



1 This assertion is based on the experiments of Sternberg, who says he saw 

 grains of wheat obtained from Egyptian tombs give birth to new wheat. Schacht, 

 professor at the University of Bonn, seems to admit this fact as proven. It is, 

 however, necessary to state that Messrs. Vilmorin and Payen think this assertion 

 doubtful. The celebrated chemist even maintains that the germinative faculty of 

 wheat does not last more than sixty vears. 



An English experimentalist sent me twenty years ago stalks of wheat which he 

 assured me had grown from grains collected in an Egyptian sarcophagus. These 

 blades were twice as high as those of our cereal, and the ears were of a peculiar 

 character. But, as M. Louis Figuier judicially observes in his work on botany, 

 we ought to be on our guard about such prodigies ; the malignity of the vulgar 

 has in such matters only too often deceived the good faith of some observers. 

 Histoire des Plantes, Paris, 1865, p. 198. 



