Seeds have been known to retain their principle of life for centuries, and long after they have seemed perfectly dead and dry, when placed in proper circumstances, they have sent out shoots and borne flowers and fruit. Mr. White relates, that when some old beech trees were removed from a spot in the neighbourhood of Selborne, where they must have stood for ages, some strawberry plants sprung up, of which the seeds must have lain dormant under the roots of the beeches. When the Spaniards took possession of Peru, many of the race of Incas, the rulers of that country, fled to the deserts and took with them what provisions they could carry. There are now, sometimes, found in these deserts, ancient vessels with very narrow mouths, containing at the bottom a few grains of _maize_ or Indian corn, the remains of the stock of those poor exiles. I have got one of the vessels; and the maize which came out of it was sown, and took root and bore seed, though it must have been bottled up for considerably more than three centuries. But now I am going to tell you something still more surprising than this. The Ancient Egyptians, from some notion connected with their religion, used at times to place in the hands and under the soles of the feet of the bodies they embalmed, the roots of a kind of lily. The roots are of a bulbous sort, not much unlike an onion, and they have often been found on those mummies which have been uncovered. One or two of them have been set to vegetate, and have actually borne flowers and seed, after having slumbered in a mummy coffin for considerably more than 2000 years! XI. You know that some seeds have wings or sails, by means of which they are transported by the winds over land and sea for very many miles. The thistle-down everybody is acquainted with. There is an eastern annual plant whose seeds are provided with wings, which, in a most curious manner, it only uses when it needs them, as you shall hear. It grows in the little pools that occur here and there in the deserts of Arabia, which, as you may suppose, in a hot climate and a sandy soil, are very apt to dry up at some seasons of the year. The seeds grow on the stalk enclosed in a roll of flaxen fibres, and when they are ripe they fall off, and if the water continues till the next year, they spring up close by where their parent plant lived. But should the pool dry up, the flaxen fibres become dry and spread out into wings, the wind takes hold of them, and away flies the seed till it reaches a more favoured spot. When it is lucky enough to get to the water, the pod speedily bursts open, and the seeds take root at the bottom. You see how, by a simple mechanical contrivance, this plant is enabled to do the same for the preservation of its species, as I told you the Actinia did by a very simple exercise of instinct, for the preservation of itself.