No More Learning

Several men of science, Dr. Carpenter among them, have used the
statement that beach plums sprang up in sand which was dug up forty
miles inland in Maine, to prove that the seed had lain there a very
long time, and some have inferred that the coast has receded so far.
But it seems to me necessary to their argument to show, first, that
beach plums grow only on a beach. They are not uncommon here, which is
about half that distance from the shore; and I remember a dense patch
a few miles north of us, twenty-five miles inland, from which the
fruit was annually carried to market. How much further inland they
grow, I know not. Dr. Charles T. Jackson speaks of finding "beach
plums" (perhaps they were this kind) more than one hundred miles
inland in Maine.

It chances that similar objections lie against all the more notorious
instances of the kind on record.

Yet I am prepared to believe that some seeds, especially small ones,
may retain their vitality for centuries under favorable circumstances.
In the spring of 1859, the old Hunt house, so called, in this town,
whose chimney bore the date 1703, was taken down. This stood on land
which belonged to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts,
and a part of the house was evidently much older than the above date,
and belonged to the Winthrop family. For many years I have ransacked
this neighborhood for plants, and I consider myself familiar with its
productions. Thinking of the seeds which are said to be sometimes dug
up at an unusual depth in the earth, and thus to reproduce long
extinct plants, it occurred to me last fall that some new or rare
plants might have sprung up in the cellar of this house, which had
been covered from the light so long. Searching there on the 22d of
September, I found, among other rank weeds, a species of nettle
(_Urtica urens_) which I had not found before; dill, which I had not
seen growing spontaneously; the Jerusalem oak (_Chenopodium Botrys_),
which I had seen wild in but one place; black nightshade (_Solanum
nigrum_), which is quite rare hereabouts, and common tobacco, which,
though it was often cultivated here in the last century, has for fifty
years been an unknown plant in this town, and a few months before this
not even I had heard that one man, in the north part of the town, was
cultivating a few plants for his own use.
I have no doubt that some or
all of these plants sprang from seeds which had long been buried under
or about that house, and that that tobacco is an additional evidence
that the plant was formerly cultivated here. The cellar has been
filled up this year, and four of those plants, including the tobacco,
are now again extinct in that locality.

It is true, I have shown that the animals consume a great part of the
seeds of trees, and so, at least, effectually prevent their becoming
trees; but in all these cases, as I have said, the consumer is
compelled to be at the same time the disperser and planter, and this
is the tax which he pays to Nature. I think it is Linnaeus who says
that while the swine is rooting for acorns he is planting acorns.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed,--a, to me, equally mysterious
origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am
prepared to expect wonders. I shall even believe that the millennium
is at hand, and that the reign of justice is about to commence, when
the Patent Office, or Government, begins to distribute, and the people
to plant, the seeds of these things.

In the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the Patent
Office, and labeled, I think, _Poitrine jaune grosse_, large yellow
squash. Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighed 1231/2 pounds,
the other bore four, weighing together 1861/4 pounds. Who would have
believed that there was 310 pounds of _poitrine jaune grosse_ in that
corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to catch it, my
ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which
unearthed it. A little mysterious hoeing and manuring was all the
_abracadabra presto-change_ that I used, and lo! true to the label,
they found for me 310 pounds of _poitrine jaune grosse_ there, where
it never was known to be, nor was before. These talismans had
perchance sprung from America at first, and returned to it with
unabated force. The big squash took a premium at your fair that fall,
and I understood that the man who bought it, intended to sell the
seeds for ten cents apiece. (Were they not cheap at that?