protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.

Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But