AGE-OLD WHEAT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 194, 18 August 1933, Page 5

AGE-OLD WHEAT.

SEED BURIED IN TOMB. EXPERT DISCOUNTS REPORT. 'SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG' (From Our Own Correspondent.) HAMILTON, Thursday. A recent newspaper report from London that wheat had been raised from seed which had been buried in a tomb in India for several thousand years is discounted by Dr. H. E. Annett, of Matangi, the well-known grasslands expert and dairy scientist'. The cable stated that the Indian Agricultural

Research Institute had found that this old seed would grow, and had given good yields.

"I feel convinced that there is something wrong with that report," states Dr. Annett, who was on the staff of the Agricultural Institute at Pusa and was in charge at one time of the chemical section. "No one with any expert knowledge of plant life accepts these old tales of the growth of 'genuine mummy wheat.'" Actual investigations have shown that where so-called mummy wheat has germinated, the wheat in question has been placed in position by guides in order to 'sell' curious tourists." Dr. Annett quoted the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," Sir Ernest Wallis Budge (one-time keeper of . Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum), Professor Percival, of Reading,' Mr. C. E. Clark, and many other botanists and antiquaries of eminence to prove that the tales of mummy wheat are not authentic.