TENACITY OP LIFE OF SEEDS AND SPORES. 75 
summer, ou the well-cultivated estate of Schoenkirchen, when the roots were examined 
during the drought and after the rain. 
The means by which we arrived at the conviction that double flowers are a conse¬ 
quence of dryness of soil and atmosphere, and not of a luxurious soil rich in nutritious 
matter,—two phenomena on which we have bestowed attention, will serve to show. 
Fifty years ago we saw Kerria ja'ponica, in a hothouse, with single flowers. Twenty 
years later we met with it in several gardens, in the open air however, but always with 
double flowers. At this time we were assured that single-flowered plants were no more 
to be found in the whole of Europe, and those who were forming herbaria offered con¬ 
siderable sums for a branch of K. japonica with single flowers. We were requested to 
take the plant in hand for the purpose of inducing it to produce single flowers. We 
were advised to plant it out in a rich soil, v/hich was done; but by chance the situation 
was sloping, consequently it did not retain moisture, and all the flowers produced for 
several years in succession were double. Shortly after, the captain of an English ship 
again brought plants bearing normal floweis from Japan, which were soon spread over 
the Continent, and of which we received one plant. After three years all the young 
plants raised from cuttings were double-flowered. 
In the year 1820 we several times visited a garden in the neighbourhood of Vienna, 
well known on account of its plant culture. The gardener there possessed an immense 
plant of Camellia japonica florihus simplicibus, and some small plants raised from this 
by cuttings, but no other variety of Camellia. He fertilized the flowers with their own 
pollen, harvested seeds, which he sowed, and the plants raised from them were placed in 
an extremely dry, lofty conservatory, where, after some years, instead of producing single 
flowers they all produced double ones. The seedlings and mother plant were planted in 
one and the same kind of earth, and some of the flowers on the old plant also showed 
an inclination to become double. 
This, at that time, to us, enigmatical phenomenon, was kept in mind until we had an 
opportunity of instituting comparisons between the climates of Japan and China and 
our own, and we then concluded that in the case of a plant imported from thence and 
exposed to such different climatic influences, the origin of the greater or less imperfec¬ 
tion of its sexual organs was probably owing to this change, as we had experienced in 
Kerria and Camellia; and that the sterility of many other exotic plants might be attri¬ 
buted to the same cause. The difference in the climatic relations of Japan and Europe 
is very considerable. In Japan, previous to the new growth of Kerria and Camellia, a 
rainy season of three months’ duration occurs; in Europe, on the contrary, dry winds 
prevail, especially in the eastern part, where our plains are often transformed into deserts. 
Is it, therefore, remarkable that a plant introduced from Japan into Europe, exposed to 
the influences of this great diversity of climate, should produce imperfect sexual organs 
incapable of further propagating the plant from seeds? Double flowers are abnormal, 
and in this respect are looked upon by botanists with contempt. A rich soil, with the 
necessary amount of moisture, will never engender double flowers. (From Otto's Gar- 
tenzeitung .')— Gardeners' Chronicle. 
NOTE ON THE TENACITY OF LIFE OF THE SEEDS AND 
SPORES OF SOME PLANTS. 
BY PROF. WILLIAM H. BREWER. 
Edwards and Colin (Annales des Sci. Nat., 2, Bot. i. 227) made experiments on the 
power of resisting elevated or depressed temperature possessed by the seeds of various 
leguminous and cereal plants. They found that all lost their vitality if heated in water 
at 167° Fahr., which is the temperature at which starch grains burst; that most of the 
seeds had their vitality destroyed when heated in water below this, but would stand a 
temperature of 122° ; while in steam they would stand 144° Fahr.; and in dry air some 
germinated after being heated a very short time to 167° Fahr. Above this all lost their 
vitality. Some would stand a dry cold of 70° Fahr. below zero. 
Berkeley states (Introduct. to Crytogam. Bot. p. 68) that he has “recorded an instance 
of the germination of thousands of grape seeds after three emersions in boiling water ; 
