No. 129.] 573 



other three attained full growth, and are now growing in the 

 garden of the Horticultural society of London. 



The most obstinate unbeliever of this account was Prof. Hen- 

 shaw, of Oxford, who demonstrated, as he supposed, the utter 

 impossibility of the thing by argument heaped upon argument. 

 His opposition provoked Mr. Lindley to the inquiry, the result 

 of which leaves not a shadow of a doubt of the veracity of Mr. 

 McLean,^ nor of the incontestable antiquity of the seeds. Mr. 

 Lindley, who had himself handled them, and marked the altera- 

 tion in their envelopes, and who witnessed their germination, is 

 positive that they w^ere buried with one of the ancient natives of 

 Great Britain. He had seen 169 other raspberry bushes grown 

 from those seeds. The illustrious savant, Lindley, places the 

 date of the burial of these seeds in the time of the ancient Eri- 

 tons ; and are at least as far back as the invasion of the Romans, 

 into Great Britain, about 1 ,700 years ago. And he supposed that 

 the chief or warrior, with wiiom they were buried, must have 

 been killed a few moments after having eaten them, as the 

 digestive powder of his stomach had not had time to alfect them. 

 Besides, it is well known that raspberry seeds are endued with 

 great vitality. 



The following fact is still more extraordinary. It is an ob- 

 servation made by Mr. William Kemp, the geologist and botanist, 

 who stated it in writing to the learned Chas. Darwin. He says : 



"At a quarter of a mile from Melrose, on the banks of the 

 Tweed, there is a quarry of sand belonging to Mr. John Bell, of 

 Melrose, which has been worked a long time. This quarry is 

 dug on the side of a hill entirely formed of sedimentary deposits, 

 fifty or sixty feet above the present level of the river. At 25 

 feet depth a workman dug up a quantity of remains of plants, 

 some of which had their seeds on. Messrs. Lindley and Kemp 

 planted these seeds and raised about one-tenth of them. They 

 proved to be of four kinds, viz : liolygon convolvulus. Some of 

 these are dyes, some astrigent, partake of the nature of rhubarb, 

 &c. ; rumex acetosella, of the same race papilionacece ; the atriplcx 

 patulo, one of the chenopods, a race including spinach, beets. 



