156 



STUDIES IN SEEDS AND FRUITS 



The view of 

 Becquerel. 



Schroder's 

 experiments. 



the air has the potentialities of immortality {Comptes rendus, 

 December 1907). 



Yet it cannot be doubted that the view expressed so 

 clearly by Becquerel {Ann. des Sciences Nat. Botan., v., 1907), 

 that it is absolutely necessary to distinguish in a seed between 

 the hygrometric water that can vary and the water enclosed in 

 the cellules of the embryo and albumen which is invariable, 

 at present holds the field. We must distinguish', he says, 

 between the water of hygrometricity and the water that 

 plays a part in the phenomena of the latent life of the 

 seed. But if Berthelot's principle is correct, the only 

 water that a seed retains after it has completed its drying 

 in air is the water of hygrometricity. According to the 

 implications of this principle, the true resting seed, as 

 already observed, needs no water for the support of its 

 latent life ; and the latent life itself becomes almost a figure 

 of speech. 



Several years ago Schroder ascertained that grains of three 

 cereals (species of Hordeum and Triticum) retained their 

 germinative capacity, notwithstanding that after undergoing a 

 process of artificial desiccation for nearly three months their 

 water-contents had been reduced respectively to 0*5, X'O, and 

 2*o per cent. {Untersuch. Botan. Inst, zu Tubingen^ 1886). It 

 would be quite as legitimate to infer from this experiment that 

 resting seeds can dispense with water altogether as to assume 

 that Schroder in his experiment reached the minimum com- 

 patible with the preservation of the germinative powers. 

 There is an obsession in the human mind respecting water and 

 active life that makes it difficult to assimilate the notion that 

 a resting seed could possibly do without it. The standpoint 

 adopted in this chapter is that the occurrence of water in a 

 properly air-dried seed is accidental as far as it is concerned 

 with the retention of the germinative capacity. It could have 

 no concern for the student of the latent life of seeds, since its 

 quantity would be the same whether the seed be living or 

 dead. 



