d across a space of sea 900 miles in
width, and would then germinate. The fact of the larger fruits often
floating longer than the small, is interesting; as plants with large
seeds or fruit which, as Alph. de Candolle has shown, generally have
restricted ranges, could hardly be transported by any other means.

Seeds may be occasionally transported in another manner. Drift timber
is thrown up on most islands, even on those in the midst of the widest
oceans; and the natives of the coral islands in the Pacific procure
stones for their tools, solely from the roots of drifted trees, these
stones being a valuable royal tax. I find that when irregularly shaped
stones are embedded in the roots of trees, small parcels of earth
are very frequently enclosed in their interstices and behind them, so
perfectly that not a particle could be washed away during the longest
transport: out of one small portion of earth thus COMPLETELY enclosed by
the roots of an oak about fifty years old, three dicotyledonous plants
germinated: I am certain of the accuracy of this observation. Again,
I can show that the carcasses of birds, when floating on the sea,
sometimes escape being immediately devoured; and many kinds of seeds
in the crops of floating birds long retain their vitality: peas and
vetches, for instance, are killed by even a few days' immersion in
sea-water; but some taken out of the crop of a pigeon, which had floated
on artificial sea-water for thirty days, to my surprise nearly all
germinated.

Living birds can hardly fail to be highly effective agents in the
transportation of seeds. I could give many facts showing how frequently
birds of many kinds are blown by gales to vast distances across the
ocean. We may safely assume that under such circumstances their rate of
flight would often be thirty-five miles an hour; and some authors have
given a far higher estimate. I have never seen an instance of nutritious
seeds passing through the intestines of a bird; but hard seeds of fruit
pass uninjured through even the digestive organs of a turkey. In the
course of two months, I picked up in my garden twelve kinds of seeds,
out of the excrement of small birds, and these seemed perfect, and some
of them, which were tried, germinated. But the following fact is more
important: the crops of birds do not secrete gastric juice, and do not,
as I know by trial, injure in the least the germination of seeds;
now, after a bird has found and devoured a la