May, 1922] DARLINGTON DR. BEAL's SEED EXPERIMENT 267 
10-12 pounds' pressure for three hours. One of the flats was used for 
growing check seeds of the same species which had succeeded in germinating 
during the last fifteen or twenty years. With checks of this kind it is very 
easy to identify very young seedHngs, which is indispensable for recording 
the number that start to germinate. The flats being in readiness, the sand 
from the bottle dug up was spread evenly over the surface in one of the 
flats and mixed slightly. Seeds were at once planted in the other flat and 
labeled, each species being kept in a small area of its own. This was on 
March 27. The flats were kept in a semi-shady place in the greenhouse at 
a temperature of about 22° C. They were watered once daily with a fine 
spray. The species planted in the check flat were as follows, being arranged 
here in the order in which they came up : Brassica nigra, Bursa hursa-pastoris, 
Anthemis cotula, Alsine media, Lepidium virginicum-, Amaranthiis retro- 
flexus, Chaetochloa lutescens, Portulaca oleracea, Oenothera biennis, Rumex 
crispus. These all made a good growth and were kept properly labeled. 
The first of Dr. Beal's seeds to germinate was Brassica nigra. By May 
7, 9 individuals of this species had come up and were identified. Having 
made good growth (2-3 inches), they were removed to allow room for other 
species. PovSsibly the second plant to appear was Chenopodium album, two 
plants of which had appeared by May 7, and were identified beyond ques- 
tion. Strangely, this species was not mentioned as being in the set. At 
about the same time two individuals of ragweed {Ambrosia elatior) were 
identified. By May 22, there were nineteen seedlings of Oenothera biennis, 
some of these being 3 inches high, nine seedlings of Rumex crispus about 
4 inches high, one plant of Portulaca oleracea with the third pair of leaves 
developed, one plant of Lepidium virgifiicum with one pair of leaves besides 
the cotyledons developed, five plants of Plantago major, some up to 3 
inches tall, one plant of Amaranthus retroflexus, and thirty-three plants of 
Amaranthus sp. (probably A. graecizans). 
Among the twenty-three species which Dr. Beal buried, he included 
Juglans nigra, Quercus rubra, and Thuja occidentalis. He says that the 
first two were not put in the bottles, and I have found no evidence to show 
that the Thuja was put in with the smaller seeds. This leaves twenty species 
that were put in bottles, or a total of one thousand small seeds in each 
bottle. With this number of seeds in each bottle it can easily be seen that, 
unless great care was taken, a few seeds other than those intended might 
easily be put in the sets. This, I believe, might account for some of the 
irregularities observed. The amaranth seeds in this bottle were evidently 
meant to be those of A. retroflexus, but thirty-three out of the thirty-four 
specimens of amaranth seedlings observed seemed to be ^. graecizans. The 
percentage of germination for the genus Amaranthus was therefore, in 
this case, 68 percent after an interval of 40 years. The irregularity in 
connection with Chenopodium album may be due to the great similarity 
between the seeds of Chenopodium and those of Amaranthus. Table i 
