ique de la
Terre_ (1875), p. 64.

[102] For most of the facts as to the zoology and botany of these islands,
I am indebted to Mr. Godman's valuable work--_Natural History of the Azores
or Western Islands_, by Frederick Du Cane Godman, F.L.S., F.Z.S., &c.,
London, 1870.

[103] See Chap. V. p. 78.

[104] Some of Mr. Darwin's experiments are very interesting and suggestive.
Ripe hazel-nuts sank immediately, but when dried they floated for ninety
days, and afterwards germinated. An asparagus-plant with ripe berries, when
dried, floated for eighty-five days, and the seeds afterwards germinated.
Out of ninety-four dried plants experimented with, eighteen floated for
more than a month, and some for three months, and their powers of
germination seem never to have been wholly destroyed. Now, as oceanic
currents vary from thirty to sixty miles a day, such plants under the most
favourable conditions might be carried 90 X 60 = 5,400 miles! But even half
of this is ample to enable them to reach any oceanic island, and we must
remember that till completely water-logged they might be driven along at a
much greater rate by the wind. Mr. Darwin calculates the distance by the
average time of flotation to be 924 miles; but in such a case as this we
are entitled to take the extreme cases, because such countless thousands of
plants and seeds must be carried out to sea annually that the extreme cases
in a single experiment with only ninety-four plants, must happen hundreds
or thousands of times and with hundreds or thousands of species, naturally,
and thus afford ample opportunities for successful migration. (See _Origin
of Species_, 6th Edition, p. 325.)

[105] The following remarks, kindly communicated to me by Mr. H. N.
Moseley, naturalist to the _Challenger_, throw much light on the agency of
birds in the distribution of plants:--"Grisebach (_Veg. der Erde_, Vol. II.
p. 496) lays much stress on the wide ranging of the albatross (Diomedea)
across the equator from Cape Horn to the Kurile Islands, and thinks that
the presence of the same plants in Arctic and Antarctic regions may be
accounted for, possibly, by this fact. I was much struck at Marion Island
of the Prince Edward group, by observing that the great albatross breeds in
the midst of a dense, low herbage, and constructs its nest of a mound of
turf and herbage. Some of the indigenous plants, _e.g._ Acaena, have
flower-heads which stick like burrs to feathers, &c., and seem specia