March 17, 1887J 



NA TURE 



463 



left for some time, labasbeer is sometimes found inside the stem 

 when broken." In Jnpan it is called Take Miso, and I have 

 only heard that some portion of fluid, or »ome solid particles, 

 occur inside the stem of bamboo, but not to such a remarkable 

 extent as we meet with in India. In the Island of Kiusiu, the 

 stem of bamboos is found sometimes filled with fluid, and 

 especially in the province of Satsum.a, particles like grains of 

 sand are often detected. In a new Japanese work about bam- 

 boos, entitled "Nihon Chikufu,'' or " .\ Collection of Japanese 

 Bamboos,'' by Nawoto Katayama, published in three volumes 

 in Tokio in 1SS5, it is st.ated that in Tokio, if bamboos from the 

 neighbouring provinces of Shimotsukc and Hitachi are kept till 

 July or August ami then broken, some watery juice or particles 

 like sand may frequently be found. These panicles are pale 

 yellow in colour, but the quantity is only sufficient to fill a very 

 small shell. " Somoku Seifu," and other Japanese botanical books, 

 also mention tabasheer. Tokutaro Ito 



Cambridge 



" The Origin of Mountain Ranges " 

 The reviewer of " The Origin of Mountain Ranges in Nature 

 (Feb. 17, p. 361) says, in reference to my views on the con- 

 traction hypothesis : — " He seems to hold that, according to the 

 contractionists, crumpling is produced by unequal contraction in 

 the solid shell itself, which certainly is not their view. And he 

 entirely omits all reference to the one fact which is the life and 

 soul of the hyjjothesis, that the earth's crust is not strong enough 

 to stand by itself without support, a fact which admits of rigid 

 mathematical demonstration." 



Will you kindly permit me to state that this is an entire mis- 

 apprehension ; that I hold neither view ; and I have a diffi- 

 culty in understanding how such inferences can be drawn from 

 anything contained in the work. T. Mellard Reade 



Liverpool, Fobniary iS 



I AM very sorr>' if I have represented Mr. Reade as saying what 

 he did not intend to say, but the construction I put upon his words 

 seemed, and still seems, to me to be that which they naturally 

 bear. Mr. Readc's notion of what it is that the contraction 

 hypothesis maintains, and his reasons for differing from its 

 conclusions, are apparently summarised in Chapter XI. on pp. 

 121-25. He there tries to form an estimate of the ratio 

 between the radial and circumferential contractions w/M/h a shell 

 of 30 miks in thickness which he .assumes to be solid. It 

 seemed to me accordingly that he was contemplating only con- 

 traction within a thin shell which he himself starts with assuming 

 to be solid, and that he deals only with " unequal contraction in 

 the solid shell itself" 



If Mr. Reade meant something quite different from this, I 

 failed to grasp his meaning ; that this was so may or may not 

 be my fault, but in either case I am much obliged to Mr. Reade 

 for putting me right, and very sorry that I should have laid upon 

 him the troublesome necessity of pointing out my mistake. 



What the other view is which Mr. Reade disavows, and what 

 other inferences are contained in the passage he has quoted, I 

 confess that I am unable to discover. A. 11. Green 



Leeds, March 13 



The Vitality of Seeds 



In a letter in your last issue (p. 414) upon the vitality 

 of seeds, " N. E. P." states that Prof. Judd in his ad- 

 dress to the Geological Association (I presume he means 

 the Geological Society) was reported to have said: "The 

 botanist cites the germination of seeds, taken from ancient 

 Egyptian tombs, .as a striking illustration of how long life 

 may remain dormant in the vegetable world." This ap- 

 pears to be a remarkable assertion to emanate from such an 

 eminent scientific m.an as Prof. Judd, for if he really did make 

 this statement one would think he must have some good proof 

 quite incontrovertible. I must admit I am sceptical, and do 

 not place credence in the statements that have been made by 

 certain people, that wheat or barley, which is frequently found 

 in the ancient tombs of Egypt, could possibly germinate after 

 the lapse, say, of 3000 years. 



We have often heard of people having had tricks played upon 

 them by crafty Arabs, who, when discovering grain, knowing, 

 perhaps, that the purchaser wished to test it, substituted for it 

 some of modern date, which was said to be of the same species. 



When this was sown, it germinated, and probably yielded 

 a fine crop ; but the real grain found in the tomb was to all 

 purposes de.ad. Mummy-wheat is, I presume, simply a com- 

 mercial name for a certain species, which has no sort of connec- 

 tion with the tombs of ancient Egypt. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 

 in his book "The Ancient Egyptians," vol. i. p. 471, refers to 

 experiments having been successfully m.ade with some grains of 

 corn discovered in the tombs. Dr. Birch .added the following 

 footnote: — "The experiments are said to have been made in 

 France. (The possibility of corn germinating after so many 

 years is strongly denied by some botanists on account of the 

 impossibility of the delicate and minute embrj'o, placed im- 

 mediately below the surface, being preserved so long in life, 

 close to the surface.)" 



As the late Dr. Birch in the above made reference to experi- 

 ments having been made in France, I beg to quote the opinion ^ 

 of M. Paul, Pierret, a very eminent Egyptologist, Conservateur 

 du Musee Egyptien du Louvi-e, in his " Dictionnaire d'Archeo- 

 logie Eg)'ptienne, " under the head of " Ble " : — 



" Tout ce qui a ete dit sur la germination des grains recueillis 

 dans les hypogees est absolument faux ; tous les essais tentes 

 dans les conditions voulues de 'sincerite scientifique ont ayorte. 

 Ce ble, seme dans la terre humide, s'amoUit, s'enfle, se decom- 

 pose, et, au bout de neuf jours, est entierement detruit." 



F. G. Hilton Price 



29 Weymouth Street, W., March 7 



I beg to refer your correspondent " N. E. P.," on this subject, 

 to my "Memoir of the Late Professor Henslow," p. 207, where 

 I have given the results of copious experiments made by him in 

 reference to the vitality of seeds, as well as the results of a close 

 investigation of the whole subject by himself, Dr. Daubeny, 

 and others— being a Committee appointed for the purpose in 

 1840 by the British Association ; all tending to .show that no 

 seeds retain their vitality for much more than forty years, and 

 ver)- few for anything like so long, and throwing utter discredit 

 upon often-received statements as to the long-retained vitality of 

 the so-called mummy- wheat found in the catacombs of Egypt. 



Bath, March 7 L. Blomefield 



The question put by your correspondent with reference to the 

 germination of seeds taken from ancient Egyptian tombs appears 

 to be directly answered by M. A. de Candolle in his work 

 on "The Origin of Cultivated Plants." His words are: — 

 " I think it pertinent to say that no grain taken from an 

 ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and sown by agriculturists has 

 ever been known to germinate. It is not that the thing is im- 

 possible, for grains are all the better presei-ved that they are 

 protected from the air and from variations of temperature or 

 humidity, and certainly these conditions are fulfilled by Egyptian 

 monuments ; but as a matter of fact, the attempts at raising 

 wheat from these ancient seeds have not been successful." 



However, if the germination of mummy-wheat is not suffic'enlly 

 authenticated, Prof. Judd might perhaps point to other caseswhich, 

 although of less value on account of their antiquity, would never- 

 theless go far enough to prove his point. There is, I believe, 

 the case recorded by Dr. Lindley of some raspben-ies "raised 

 in the garden of the Horticultural Society from seeds taken from 

 the stomach of a man \vhose skeleton was found thirty feet 

 below the surface of the earth, at the bottom of a barrow which 

 was opened near Dorchester. He had been buried with some 

 coins of the Emperor Hadrian, and it is therefore probable that 

 the seeds were sixteen or seventeen hundred years old." 



The following well-ascertained fact, recorded by Prof. 

 Duchartre and others, may prove of interest. Some years ago 

 in Paris, when a number of very old houses were being pulled 

 down in the " Cite" to m.ake room for Haussmannian improve- 

 ments. Dr. Boisduval examined some dark-looking earth taken 

 from the very foundations of one of those houses. The earth 

 was found to contain seeds, which, being planted carefully under 

 a glass bell, germinated in due time, and proved to be seeds of 

 y Illicit! Imfoiiius, L. This p'ant, as is well known, aflfects 

 damp, marshy places such as the island was on which I.utetia 

 Parisiorum grew up. It was therefore admitted as very probable 

 that those seeds of J uncus biifonius must have been dormant in 

 the ground ever since the time when the "Cite" marshes 

 became dried up, and the ground began to be occupied by 

 houses. L. Martial Klein 



University College, Dublin 



