340 [Assembly 



When the seeds were beginning to ripen, gre^t numbers of birds 

 infested" the field, eating the grains and causing much to fall on 

 the ground. After harvest he dug the field up deep with the 

 spade to prepare it for a nursery of forest trees. The surface soil 

 with the seed in it was put at the boitom, and the clay subsoil on 

 top. Twelve years afterwards he took away the trees from a part 

 of this field. This operation necessarily left holes where the 

 roots had been taken out. Soon after this he found the earth about 

 the holes covered with young millet and buckwheat plants — 

 while before this, not a solitary one had been seen for twelve 

 years. He says they had been buried so deep that they could 

 not germinate. 



Before this — that is, in 1809 — he had broken up a piece of 

 land to the depth of a metre (nearly 40 inches) with spade and 

 pickaxe, to make a fruit garden. The surface soil was put at the 

 bottom, and the subsoil on the surface, so that a multitude of the 

 seeds of rushes and heaths on the field were now buried about a 

 metre deep. 



Twenty-five years after that he was very much astonished to 

 see the ground about the holes made to remove the trees covered 

 with a multitude of young rushes and heaths, and now, forty 

 years, these seeds grow abundantly whenever a hole is made in 

 removing a tree. This seems to establish peremptorily that the 

 earth has a power of preserving seeds at a certain depth, for an 

 indefinite length of time. M^uuin. 



GENERA AND SPECIES OF PLANTS KNOWN AS LATE 



AS 1846. 



1 . Tallogens- — Simple structures, no wood, stems and leaves in- 

 distinguishable. 



A thallus is a fusion of root, stem and leaf into a general mass. 

 Fungus, Lichens, Algae or Sea Weed, &c. 



2. Acrogens. — Stems and leaves distinguishable, such as Ferns, 

 Honetails, Club Mosses, &c. 



3. Rrizogens. — Sexual or flowing plants. Fructification spring- 

 ing from a thallus, (Oayyos, a green leaf.) The wood of their 



