﻿FIELD AND FOREST. 



anything whatever to grow on it spontaneously until it is mixed with 

 soil or altered in texture by long exposure. The white clover is a 

 common plant, perfecting its seed often unobserved, as it is very low 

 and trailing, and it spreads rapidly when assisted by its favorite 

 manures, — often merely by a coat of fine sand, in which other plants 

 liable to choke it out do not readily flourish. In order that the 

 appearance of plants, new to any given locality should be a proof that 

 the seeds from which they spring are very old, we regard it essential 

 that the presence of the seeds in the soil referred to should be proved, 

 before it is exposed to the possibility of receiving them from recent 

 sources. Mr. Meehan, the well-known editor of the Gardener 's 

 Monthly, has examined the soil of a street newly graded near his home, 

 and finds the first six inches of surface soil usually contains abundance 

 of seeds, the next six inches fragments of roots, below that little or 

 nothing of vegetable origin. It is true that moisture-seeking roots run 

 several feet deep, but the quantity of these is small compared with 

 those more superficial. We have repeated Mr. Meehan's experiments 

 on soil from various places near Washington with similar results. The 

 examination is not difficult, as it merely requires that a portion of the 

 given soil be thoroughly stirred up with three or four times as much 

 water, and allowed to settle, when all vegetable matter will be found 

 floating on top or resting on the mud. Tested in this way we doubt 

 if living seeds, a century old, could be proved to exist in any of the 

 earth's strata, at any rate the impression made by our examination of 

 the subject is, that no proposition so generally believed as that of the 

 extended duration of vitality in seeds rests upon so little proof. 



Most of the alleged facts, often quoted in periodicals or newspaper 

 literature, are either modifications of old statements, or prove based on 

 entirely insufficient evidence when examined. 



While writing this article we have had the opportunity of examining 

 a considerable collection of seeds made by Dr. Edward Palmer, taken 

 from Indian graves in Utah. These seeds were placed in earthern 

 vessels in the burying places and are no doubt of great antiquity. 

 They were chiefly of four species, one belonging to the Composite and 

 three to the Chenopqdiacece, * and appeared similar to seeds now used 

 for food by the Indians of that region. There was no evidence of 



* See American Naturalist, May 1876, for instance of the occurrence of seeds of 

 Salvia Columbaria in these graves. 



