LATENT LIFE 179 
in the dry seed; it has stopped. The seed is like a 
watch, stopped but not run down, which a shake 
might set going again. This view leads one to the 
reflection that if latent life is an entire suspension 
of protoplasmic functions, then the period during 
which revivification is possible should admit of great 
extension. Now when we inquire into the facts 
we find that the limits are not usually very long. 
This suggests, at first sight at least, that what has 
happened has been an extreme slowing down, not 
a stoppage of the vital processes or metabolism. 
Some of the dried Anguillulid worms will not revive 
after fourteen years, and others not after twenty- 
one, and there are limits with seeds also. The 
Sleeping Beauty cannot sleep indefinitely. That 
distinguished Egyptologist M. Maspero never suc- 
ceeded in germinating the grains of wheat which 
he collected in the tombs of the Pharaohs, though 
frauds practised on the inexpert yielded surprising 
results. Becquerel’s careful experiments showed 
that some seeds may germinate after resting in 
a herbarium—a hortus siccus indeed—for eighty- 
seven years, but the tenure of latent life is in most 
cases much more limited. Twenty germinations 
were got from seeds from twenty-eight to eighty- 
seven years old, but most were towards the lower 
figure. Even very tough seeds, which Ewart has 
called ‘‘ macrobiotic,’ do not keep their germinative 
power much beyond a hundred years. In many 
cases among plants and animals the limit of latent 
life is a few years, This seems against Claude 
