IRatuve IRotes : 
tEbe Selbovne Society’s fllbagaslne. 
No. 6i. JANUARY, 1895. Vol. VI. 
THE GERMINATION OF MUMMY WHEAT. 
HAT it is very hard to destroy a popular error is 
apparent from the tenacity with which multitudes 
believe in the vitality of grains of wheat which were 
enclosed thousands of years ago in mummy cases. 
There seems, as the story is told, abundant evidence from 
credible witnesses that grains of wheat taken out of an ancient 
coffin have germinated, and that fields of mummy wheat, unlike 
any of our British wheats, have been grown in England. 
I have had occasion to look into two cases of the asserted 
germination of mummy seeds. In the one case, the late John 
MacGregor took, as he believed, four seeds out of a coffin, the 
property of the Duke of Sutherland, two of which germinated 
in his room in the Temple. As soon as two young plants were 
seen, the pots were sent to the Botanical Gardens, Regent’s 
Park, where they were carefully tended until they seeded. Mr. 
MacGregor had a good photograph taken of them, a copy of 
which is before me. No one who knows anything of the 
character of the late Mr. MacGregor can for a moment doubt 
his bona fides. The two plants produced from the seeds were 
oats, a grain unknown in ancient Egypt ! How the seeds got 
into Mr. MacGregor’s flower pots may be imagined; there is no 
evidence. He tells us that the other two grains taken by him 
out of the coffin were sent, after the)' were found, to Mr. 
Sowerby at the Botanic Gardens. In his practised and careful 
hands they failed to germinate. 
A somewhat similar instance is recorded by the late Professor 
Henslow in a paper read to the British Association in i860 
(Reports, p. no). It was “ the case w'hich had been relied on 
so much, of the growth of mummy wheat by Mr. Tupper from 
