205 
SECT. XXII. 
TIME OF THE EVOLUTION OF SEEDS. 
See in corruption, all surprizing state, 
How struggling life eludes the stroke of fate; 
Shock’d at the scene, though sense averts its eye. 
Nor stops the wond’rous process to descry; 
Yet juster thought the mystic change pursues, 
And with delight Almighty wisdom views! 
Boyse. 
A pigeon sits upon her eggs a fortnight; an hen, three weeks; a duck, 
goose, and turkey, a month. * 
So it is with seeds; these differ in their precise periods of evolution. 
The millet (milium), and wheat (triticum), vegetate in one day; 
kidney-bean, mustard , and spinach , in three days; lettuce and fennel (ane- 
thum fosniculum), in about four days; cucumber , gourd , and others, in 
five days; beet and radish in six days; barley in seven days; orache (atri- 
plex, in eight days; cabbage in ten days; common beans (faba), fifteen 
days; onion, nineteen days; and parsley (petroselinum) from forty to fifty 
days. Of the common garden seeds, I believe there are none which take a 
shorter time to vegetate than several of the cruciform tribe of plants, such 
as mustard and turnip ; nor any, I think, a longer time than parsley . The 
long torpidity of the last mentioned seed, has given rise to a vulgar proverb, 
“ that parsley goes nine times to the devil, before it comes up.” 
The seeds of many vegetables take a whole year to vegetate: such as 
the peach, the almond , the walnut , the chesnut, the piony (p^onia offi- 
xalis), different species of canna , or Indian reed, and others. Other seeds 
require two years before they vegetate, such as the common dogwood (cor- 
nus Florida), th q filbert (corylus avell ana), and the common papaw, 
* Times of gestation in some animals. The Elephant, 2 years. Camel, 1 year. Horse, 
U months. Cow, 9 months. Stag, 8 months. Goat, 5 months. Hog, 4 months. Wolf, 73 days. 
Dog, 63 days. Cat, 56 days. Hedgehog, 40 days. Hare, 30 days. Guinea-pig, 21 days. 
