BRIEFER ARTICLES. 
THE VITALITY OF SEEDS. 
In the autumn of 1879 I began the following experiments, with the view 
of learning something more in regard to the length of time the seeds of 
some of our most common plants would remain dormant in the soil and 
yet germinate when exposed to favorable conditions. I selected fifty 
freshly grown seeds from each of twenty-three different kinds of plants. 
Twenty such lots were prepared with the view of testing them at different 
times in the future. Each lot or set of seeds was well mixed in moderately 
moist sand, just as it was taken from three feet below the surface, where 
the land had never been plowed. The seeds of each set were well mixed 
with the sand and placed in a pint bottle, the bottle being filled and left 
uncorked, and placed with the mouth slanting downward so that water 
could not accumulate about the seeds. These bottles were buried on 4 
sandy knoll in a row running east and west, and placed fifteen paces north- 
west from the west end of the big stone set up by the class of 1873. A 
bowlder stone barely even with the surface soil was set at each end of the 
row of bottles, which were buried about twenty inches below the surface 
of the ground. I should make an exception in the case of the acoms, 
which were placed in the soil near the bottles, and not inside bottles. At 
the end of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and now twenty-five years, sets of these 
seeds were tested for vitality. The names given in the following table 
were those in use when the seeds were buried. Some of those marked * 
germinated; none of those marked o germinated. 2 
In all the species in the five tests made, eight out of twenty-two failed a 
germinate; and of the remaining fourteen, some of ten species g¢ 
often when they had been buried twenty-five years. The acorns buried 
near the bottles were all dead at the end of two years. I soon began wih 
experiments with acorns, and in addition planted some black walnuts V 
the acorns. On a sandy knoll these nuts were buried at various depths 
in a hole the depth of which was equal to the length of a spade and handle, 
some of them three feet or more below the surface. After they had re : 
nearly two years, some of them were examined with the following resus: 
Some of the walnuts and acorns planted only a few inches beneath ' 
face had come up the next summer after planting, while those ee 
avev 
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