SURVIVAL OF SEEDS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11827, 7 January 1933, Page 2

SURVIVAL OF SEEDS

TAKEN FROM. TUT'S TOMB

ANOTHER MYTH EXPLODED

Somewhat in advance of the usual time, the old story of grain from King Tutankhamen’s tomb making a. wonderful growth has been given to the American public recently; but it is a pea of the Usual wheat. In the case of mummy wheats, a bunch of heads was formed, with an increase of one grain to several hundreds. These mummy peas, obtained in a mysterious way, yielded two hundred on the stalk, which was half an inch in diameter (comments a Canadian, paper.) Plants have their limited periods of existence, and while seeds will survive a' few years in Storage, it is out of the question that they will germinate after thousands of year's. According to Dr. Cl L. Huskins, of McGill University, grains have been found enclosed in old Egyptian sarcophagi, hot they were black and completely changed in their chemical composition. Further than that, a research worker, De Candolle, in seek ing the origin of peas, lias found out that they appear to have spread north and east from Sicity in ancient days. Actually, remains of pea s have been found on the sites of the primeval Swiss like dwellings which date, as far back as good King Tutankhamen. Yet peas were never cultivated in Egypt. Modern wheat was not cultivated there either. The Egyptians did not know modern wheats. They grew what was an ancestor to the present-day macaroni wheat. Members of 'the leguminous family to which the cultivated pea belongs retain their powers of germination for comparatively long- years'. While only 6 per cent.. of the common - peas will germinate, after a; storage of six years, the-seed of the Egyptian lotus is said to retain its power of germination for 200 years. , .