260 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



though partially pyritized. All these examples tend to 

 show the extreme slowness of the process of decay in ordi- 

 nary vegetable tissues when excluded from the usual con- 

 ditions of decay by burial in the earth. 



The oily tissues of which seeds are composed are still 

 more capable of resisting the tendency to dissolution, and 

 ought certainly to remain unchanged, under circumstances 

 which permit such perfect preservation of ordinary ligneous 

 fibre. The evidences are very conclusive that the seeds of 

 ordinary vegetation may lie dormant in the surface-soil for 

 half a dozen or a dozen years. The seeds of the various 

 " fire-weeds" which spring up on a forest clearing after the 

 brush has been burned off, must have reposed in a latent 

 state during the existence of the forest whose disappear- 

 ance is the signal for the resumption of their vital activity. 

 The same is true of the seeds of the "old field-pines," which 

 have probably lain for an age or more, awaiting the matu- 

 rity and destruction of the deciduous forest which usurped 

 the soil. How many ages may they have lain there ? How 

 many more might they have lain, and still been found ready 

 for the first opportunity to seize a foothold ? 



There are some facts in our possession which are still 

 more specific. It is well known that Dr. Lindley raised 

 three raspberry plants from seeds discovered in the stom- 

 ach of a man whose skeleton was found thirty feet below 

 the surface of the earth, at the bottom of a barrow or bu- 

 rial-mound which was opened near Dorchester, England. 

 With the body had been buried some coins of the Emperor 

 Hadrian, from which we are justified in assuming that these 

 seeds had retained their vitality for the space of sixteen or 

 seventeen hundred years. If they remained undamaged 

 that length of time, their condition was practically fixed ; 

 and who shall say that ten thousand years would have pro- 

 duced a sweater effect ? 



