The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements: "Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man, together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!) at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance connected with the case was, that _the raspberry seeds were recovered from the stomach_ (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society, where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism, provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar. But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in one." This statement must be received _cum grano_. The Romans never used coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil, taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."