24-YEAR-OLD STEAK.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1902, 23 April 1913, Page 2

24-YEAR-OLD STEAK.

I HOPE OF PRESERVING DORMANT LIFE IN WHEAT FOR 3,000 YEARS. A 24 year-old beef steak is mentioned by Mr R. Wliyinper in an interesting article on Mummy Wheat in tliis month's issue of "Knowledge." The steak was sealed up in a vacuum by his uncle in 1889, and it is still in remarkably good state of preservation, though it has shrunk a good deal. Mr R. Whymper points out that the experiments of' for ever buried the alluring possibility of genuine mummy wheat reproducing its kind. Even ten-year-old wheat has failed to germinate, but he points out that the loss of 2 per cent of moisture and its vitality were the only outstanding features which distinguished mummy wheat recovered from an Egyptiar tomb after 8.000 years from wheat only one year old. It is hoped that as a result of experiments which are being made the vitality of wheat will be extended and the natural process of decay arrested till it is conceivable that dormant life mav be prolonged beyond even the 3,000 years which havo passed over the head of the mummy wheat now under examination and ol its accompanying and honoured dead.