THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 565 



hardy, preserve their germinating power for a long time. 

 Haricot beans have been obtained from seeds taken out 

 of the herbarium of Tournefort, which could not have been 

 less than one hundred years old. 



More delicate seeds resist destructive causes even 

 much longer than this. A few years ago a successful 

 attempt was made to grow seeds from the heliotrope, 

 lucerne, and clover, which had been found in a Gallo- 

 Roman tomb more than fifteen hundred years old. 



An analogous fact, which it seems impossible to doubt 

 on account of the high reputation of the botanist who 

 relates it, is that which is mentioned by Lindley. This 

 savant assures us that seeds of the raspberry, which had 

 been taken from a Celtic burying -ground dating about 

 seventeen hundred years back, having been sown in the 

 garden of the Horticultural Society of London, produced 

 bushes of their species which are still to be seen. 



But life seems to make a still longer stay in the embyro 

 of some other plants. Many learned men maintain that 

 grains of wheat of such antiquity as to go back to the 

 epoch of the Pharaohs, have germinated and yielded a 

 harvest after having been intrusted to the earth! They 

 had been found in Egyptian burying-places by the side of 

 mummies, and thus in all probability had been reaped on 

 the bordei-s of the Nile three or four thousand years ago.^ 



According to some English botanists the bulb of the 

 maritime sc[uill presents a longevity not less extraordinary. 



1 This assertion is based on the experiments of Sternberg, who says he saw 

 grains of wheat obtained from Egyptian tombs give birth to new wheat. Schacht, 

 professor at the university of Bonn, seems to admit this fact as proven. It is, 

 however, necessary to state that Messrs. Vilmorin and Payen think this asser- 

 tion doubtful. The celebrated chemist even maintains that the germiuative 

 faculty of wheat does not last more than sixty years. 



An English experimentalist sent me, twenty years ago, stalks of wheat which 



