y be
asked, have other individuals of these species retained the same
characters in many different quarters of the globe, where the climate
and many other conditions are so varied?

_Seeds and plants from the Egyptian tombs._--The evidence derived from
the Egyptian monuments was not confined to the animal kingdom; the
fruits, seeds, and other portions of twenty different plants, were
faithfully preserved in the same manner; and among these the common
wheat was procured by Delille, from closed vessels in the sepulchres of
the kings, the grain of which retained not only their form but even
their color; so effectual has proved the process of embalming with
bitumen in a dry and equable climate. No difference could be detected
between this wheat and that which now grows in the East and elsewhere;
and in regard to the barley, I am informed by Mr. Brown, the celebrated
botanist, that its identity with the grain of our own times can be
tested by the closest comparison. On examining, for example, one of the
seeds from Mr. Sam's Egyptian collection in the British Museum, it is
found that "the structure of the husks or that part of the flower which
is persistent, agrees precisely with the barley of the present day, in
having one perfect flower and the filiform rudiments of a second." Some
naturalists believe that the perfect identification of the ancient
Egyptian cerealia with the varieties now cultivated has been carried
still further, by sowing the seeds taken out of the catacombs, and
raising plants from them; but we want more evidence of this fact.
Certain it is, that when the experiment was recently made in the botanic
garden at Kew, with 100 seeds of wheat, barley, and lentils, from the
Egyptian collection before mentioned of the British Museum, not one of
them would germinate.[809]

_Native country of the common wheat._--And here I may observe that there
is an obvious answer to Lamarck's objection, that the botanist cannot
point out a country where the common wheat grows wild, unless in places
where it may have been derived from neighboring cultivation.[810] All
naturalists are well aware that the geographical distribution of a great
number of species is extremely limited; that it was to be expected that
every useful plant should first be cultivated successfully in the
country where it was indigenous; and that, probably, every station which
it partially occupied, when growing wild, would be selected by the
agriculturist a