Chances of Life 283 



remarkable is that of the seedlings raised by Dr. 

 Lindley, in Chiswick Gardens, from raspberry-seeds 

 found in Celtic tumuli perhaps some two thousand 

 years old. Raspberry-seeds have very hard coats, it is 

 true, and these seeds were safely buried from the air, 

 and beyond the reach of any great changes of temper- 

 ature ; but yet that things so small should have been 

 able to preserve living germs within them for so long a 

 time is a wonderful proof of their great tenacity of 

 life. 



Generally speaking, it seems that the seeds of wild 

 plants have the advantage over the cultivated in this 

 respect. They retain their vitality longer ; but then, 

 on the other hand, there are not so many of them. 

 Cultivated plants usually produce most seed — except, 

 of course, where blossoms have been doubled or fruit 

 improved at its expense. 



When one considers the vast quantity of seed pro- 

 duced, and the ample contrivances for scattering it, it 

 is surprising to find that, after all, many plants do not 

 increase their numbers at all. There are just about the 

 same number of them now that there were years ago — 

 neither more nor fewer. 



Take, for example, the common wild spotted orchis, 

 a single plant of which often bears as many as thirty 

 seed-vessels, each containing 6,200 seeds. Suppose that 

 there were 400 bad seeds to each capsule, 12,000 in all, 

 which is a fair allowance, one plant might still be the 

 parent of 174,000 others — enough to cover nearly an 

 acre of ground if the plants grew just far enough apart 

 to allow a proper amount of space to each. The de- 

 scendants of these, again, might more than cover the 



