872 



SCIENCE. 



FN. S. Vol. XVII. No. 439. 



I got Monoclonius crassus; two of these I got. 

 Both are M. orassus. Two you got, one larger 

 (If. spenocei^s) and one smaller (If. fissus) 

 than mine. It is about these latter that I want 

 information. Marsh has been duplicating this 

 work in his usual shameless style. According to 

 him, nothing has been done in this field before. 

 He made a good beginning by describing the horns 

 of one of these fellows as a new species of bison. 

 Answer soon. Very truly, '' 



E. D. Cope. 



I remember distinctly helping the professor 

 collect his type specimen. It was on the 

 south side of the river, between our camp and 

 Cow Island. The specimens I collected and 

 those of Mr. Isaac were near together, on the 

 north side of the river, about five miles below 

 Cow Island Station. To my knowledge. Cope 

 never collected on this side. He took passage 

 on a steamboat the day after we crossed, about 

 October 15. Mr. Isaac and myself made a 

 camp about three miles below the station 

 afterwards, and the material referred to was 

 found some distance below our camp. These 

 thick deposits Cope called Cretaceous No. 6, 

 or Judith Eiver group. So I was surprised 

 to find none of the species of Monoclonius in 

 the Judith Eiver column. The fish Hedron- 

 chus, named in my honor, came, I am sure, 

 from the bone-beds in the Dog Creek region. 

 To help solve the problem of the age of these 

 beds it seems to me one way would be to put 

 the Dog Creek fossils in their proper place 

 in the column, and not confuse them with the 

 Monoclonius material that was only found by 

 us near Cow Island. If the type localities 

 are systematically studied and the' stratigraph- 

 ical characters fully understood, proof may be 

 forthcoming that the Monoclonius beds are 

 older than the Judith Eiver. They are cer- 

 tainly forty miles further down the Missouri 

 than the unmistakable Judith Eiver beds that 

 rest on the Fort Pierre and Fox Hills at Dog 

 Creek. Ch.\rles H. Sternberg. 



SEEDS BURIED IN THE SOIL. 



ISTujiEROus cases are on record in which 

 seeds are said to have remained dormant in the 

 soil for some considerable time, varying from 

 a few years to many centuries. Such reports 

 have always been and will continue to be of 



much popular interest because many of these 

 seeds, when taken, by chance, from their ac- 

 cidental burying ground and exposed to condi- 

 tions favorable for germination, have, in many 

 instances, indicated a remarkable prolongation 

 of vitality. It must, however, be remembered 

 that such reports are based chiefly on acci- 

 dental results, in most eases being even highly 

 speculative, and are, therefore, of but little 

 value in furnishing reliable data as to the 

 length of time seeds will retain their vitality 

 when buried in the soil. 



The time required for the completion of 

 such experiments must necessarily extend 

 over a number of years, and for this reason 

 but very few actual experiments have been 

 made. The most important are those of Dr. 

 Beal, as reported in the Michigan Farmer, 

 November 30, 1901, in which he found that 

 seeds of twelve out of twenty-one species re- 

 sponded to germination tests after having been 

 buried for twenty years. 



In so much as the question is continually 

 being asked, ' How long can seeds remain 

 buried in the soil and still retain their power 

 of germination ? ' we have started a series of 

 experiments in connection with our work in 

 the Seed Laboratory of the U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture, with the hope of securing some 

 definite data and thereby answering this ques- 

 tion once for all. For these experiments we 

 have taken 112 different samples of seed, rep- 

 resenting 109 species, 84 genera and 34 fani- 

 ilies. These have been so selected as to in- 

 clude seeds of most of our common field and 

 garden plants, as well as seeds of many of the 

 grasses and our most noxious weeds. These 

 seeds were first carefully counted, of most 

 samples 200 seeds being taken; however, only 

 100 of some of the larger seeds such as beans, ' 

 peas, corn, etc. The seeds were all of the 

 harvest of 1902, save two of the duplicate 

 samples of red clover. 



Preparatory to burial the previously covmt- 

 ed samples of seed were mixed with dry clay 

 soil and packed in well-baked, porous clay 

 pots of four, three and two inches diameter, 

 depending on the size of the seeds; inverted 

 clay saucers serving as covers for the various 

 pots. 



