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THE PLANT WORLD. 
THE TEACHERS DEPARTMENT. 
Edited by Professor C. Stuart Gager. 
The Vitality of Seeds. —Considerable misconception exists 
in the lay mind concerning the length of time that seeds will re¬ 
tain their power to germinate. Stories of the germination of 
wheat grains preserved for thousands of years with Egyptian 
mummies though widely circulated, are not well authenticated. 
In the August (1905) number of the Botanical Gazette, Pro¬ 
fessor W. J. Beal, records experiments on the vitality of seeds, 
begun by him twenty-five years ago. Twenty lots of fifty freshly 
grown seeds each, from twenty-three different kinds of plants 
were placed with moist sand in a pint bottle. The bottles, un¬ 
corked, and with the mouth slanting downward to prevent the 
accumulation of water, were placed in a sandy knoll about twenty 
inches below the surface. Sets of seeds were tested for vitality 
at the end of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five years. 
Of acorns, which were placed in soil near the bottles, but not 
in them, all were dead at the end of two years. Eight out of 
twenty-two species failed to germinate at the end of five years 
and at each test thereafter. There were Ambrosia artemisiae- 
folia, Bromus secalinus, Erechthites hieracifolia, Euphorbia 
maculata , Lychnis Githago, Quercus rubra, Thuja occidentals, 
and Trifolium repens. 
Seeds from eleven species germinated after twenty-five years. 
Among these were Brassica nigra, Capsella Bursa-pastoris, 
Oenothera biennis, Rumex crispus, and Portulaca oleracea. 
Some seeds of red clover kept for twenty-two years, for a 
time exposed to light, and for some years kept in a dark closet 
in a well corked two-ounce bottle germinated. The percentage 
was very small, less than 2%. C. S. G. 
Raising Corn in the Laboratory. —In view of the fact that 
the maize or Indian corn furnishes a large proportion of our 
cereal products and so enters intimately into the life of man, it 
must be conceded that the study of its life history is valuable to 
students in our secondary schools. The storage of food outside 
