246 HIGH VITALITY OF SEEDS. 



being generally regarded as the immediate causes of long pro- 

 tracted seminal vitality. The following instance mentioned 

 by a correspondent of the " Gardeners' Chronicle, (1843, p. 863) 

 is still more difficult of explanation. " In the progress of some 

 improvements about my premises, we had occasion to remove 

 an old privy, with its cesspool. After the removal of the soil 

 from the cistern of the latter, a ladling or dipping-hole was 

 discovered at one corner, completely filled with Gooseberry, 

 Currant, and Grape seeds, and a few Cherry-stones; in all, 

 about half a bushel. It was evident that these seeds had been 

 the contributions of many summers, and that after resisting the 

 decomposing powers of human digestion, and then of the 

 putrid mass in which they had lain so long, they had made 

 their way, by their superior gravity, into the hole in question, 

 to the exclusion of all the more soluble materials. The cess- 

 pool and its superstructure were known to be at least fifty 

 years old ; and although it was occisionally cleared out, it had 

 never been thought worth while to make the clearance so com- 

 plete as to empty the hole in which this curious ' depot ' had 

 been made. The brickwork being grubbed up, and the soil 

 and seed thrown into a compost, little more was thought of the 

 matter till the next year, when, and for three or four years 

 after, seedling Gooseberries, Cherries, and Currants were found 

 springing in great numbers all about my garden, in various 

 parts of which the manure of this compost had been distributed." 

 The ingenious observer from whom this fact was derived, sug- 

 gested in explanation, that " although we are not warranted in 

 supposing that any animal ovum can exist for years, much less 

 centuries, unchanged, under the most favourable circumstances 

 we can have any conception of, resistive of external agencies, 

 yet, such instances as the above, and that of Elder-seed," men- 

 tioned in the Magazine of Natural History, for 1843, which 

 when strewed on the ground for manure came up in abundance, 

 although twice boiled in the process of making wine and even 

 afterwards present during fermentation, " would incline one to 

 believe, that in a lower order of created beings certain mole- 

 cular attractions may subsist for an indefinite period, conserva- 

 tive of the predisposition to vegetative action. This can hardly 



