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An account of some seeds, buried at a great depth in a sand-pit, which germinated; by Mr. William Kemp of Galashiels in a letter to Charles Darwin Esq.

Having heard of the discovery of some seeds at the bottom of a sand-quarry, I collected a considerable number of them & carefully examined the layer in which they were embedded. They were apparently of only two kinds; I sent specimens of them through Mr Darwin, to Professor Lindley & sowed the others myself – The plants reared by myself were sent to Professor Henslow, who states that they consist of Polygonums convolulus & P. aviculare, & a variety of Atriplex patula; The seeds planted at the Horticultural Society by the kindness of Professor Lindley, produced Rumex acetosella, & an Atriplex, which was not at first recognized, but which Mr. Babington

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states is exactly like a variety of A. angustifolia which he has been growing in the mud of salt marshes and on manure-heaps.

The sand quarry is situated about a quarter of a mile west of Melrose and at the height of between 50 & 60 feet above the nearest part of the Tweed.

The seeds were mingled with some decayed vegetable fibres & formed a layer, resting upon some thin beds 8 inches in the fine sandy clay. These beds overlay a mass of gravel, which again rested on a great mound belonging to the boulder formation. This mound which extends about a mile along the middle of the valley, is about 90 feet in thickness & I believe was formed by the action of glaciers.

It contains enormous angular block of rock & others smoothed & distinctly scored in lines parallel to their longer axes. The layer of sandy day on which the seeds rested, was capped by upwards of 25 feet in thickness of distinctly stratified sand, which has been largely quarried. The beds of sand vary in thickness & in fineness; sometimes they alternate with thin seams of impalpable clay & sometimes they

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contain minute pebbles & fragments of carbonaceous decayed wood. The layers slope at an angle of 15 degrees towards the valley, & in this direction they thin out: the upper layers extend further into the valley than the lower ones; the entire mass has a level top, & is capped by some thin beds of fine gravel. From these several facts (as every geologist will admit) & from the general aspect of the layers of sand it is scarcely possible to doubt that they were deposited by a river or torrent, at the point where it entered a sheet of water I had long been of opinion that the valley of the Tweed in this part must formerly have been occupied by a lake, at a period when a great trap-dike, 100 yards wide, which crosses the valley four miles lower down at Old Melrose, had not been cut through. By an accurate levelling, I have ascertained that the layers of sand lie just beneath that level which a lake, would hold, if the barrier at Old Melrose were reclosed.

A depression on the surface of the land, can, also, be distinctly followed from the spot, where the sand-quarry is situated, up the valley, to where it joins the bed

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of the existing river; I can not doubt that, the Tweed anciently flowed in this depression & deposited on the borders of the lake, the layers of sand, where we now find them. It is certain that in the time of the Romans, about 2000 years since, no lake existed here; & when we reflect on the time necessary to have worn down the barrier & drained so large a lake, which must have stood at its highest level, whilst the thin layers of sand were deposited over the bed with the vegetable remains, the antiquity of these seeds is truly astonishing, & it is most wonderful that they should retain their power of germination. It is a case far more wonderful than that of the Egyptian wheat or of the Raspberry seeds from the Roman Barrow in Dorsetshire.

As the plants raised are common British weeds, it is indispensable that I should detail the precautions, which

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I took, to ascertain that they did not come from other seeds existing in the soil, in which they were planted. I first put all the seeds into a tumbler of water, & about one fourth sunk to the bottom; of these I planted about three dozen in parallel rows in flower pots in my house, & some others in the garden; & I carefully marked each row. Rather more than one dozen of these seeds germinated, so that of the seeds found, only about one tenth part produced plants. I watched from day to day the germination & saw each little plant bring to the surface the husk of its seeds, & these husks I compared under a microscope with other seeds which I had not planted. None of my plants grew vigorously.

Five or six weeds appeared out of the rows, & these I picked out & threw away, as

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they appeared. Of the two kind of seeds, sent to Professor Lindley, one was pronounced by him to be a Polygonum & the other probably a Chenopodium; this latter genus belongs to the same natural family with Atriplex, & the seeds resemble each other. It is, therefore, certain that I planted seeds, resembling those of Polygonum & Atriplex; now can anyone believe that in the soil in the garden & in the flower pot (which in the latter produced only five or six weeds) there was accidentally lying in exactly the same parallel rows in which I planted my seeds above a dozen other seeds of these two genera. I think no one will imagine that this could have happened. Moreover the few seeds

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they appeared. The seeds, which I sent to Professor Lindley were pronounced by him

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weeds.)

Horticultural Society produced an Atriplex & a Rumex; whether this latter plant was really produced from my seeds, I do not know; but as its triangular seeds resemble those of Polygonum, I may have overlooked their difference, & have obtained three kind from the sand-quarry.

I hope that this account besides establishing the fact that seeds may retain when naturally preserved their vitality for enormous periods of time, from an epoch when the external features of the country were widely different, will, stimulate others to search for seeds in the ancient alluvial deposits of other districts.

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Documents on the Buried seeds of Galashiels.