436 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION [CHAP. VI 



Letter 332 9 o'clock. I find my present work tries me a good deal, 

 and sets my heart palpitating, so I must be careful. But 

 I should so much like to see Henslow, and likewise meet 

 Lindley if the fates will permit. You will see whether there 

 will be time for any criticism in detail on my MS. before 

 dinner : not that I am in the least hurry, for it will be months 

 before I come again to Geograph. Distrib. ; only I am afraid 

 of your forgetting any remarks. 



I do not know whether my very trifling observations on 

 means of distribution are worth your reading, but it amuses 

 me to tell them. 



The seeds which the eagle had in [its] stomach for 

 eighteen hours looked so fresh that I would have bet five 

 to one that they would all have grown ; but some kinds 

 were all killed, and two oats, one canary-seed, one clover, and 

 one beet alone came up ! Now I should have not cared 

 swearing that the beet would not have been killed, and I 

 should have fully expected that the clover would have been. 

 These seeds, however, were kept for three days in moist 

 pellets, damp with gastric juice, after being ejected, which 

 would have helped to have injured them. 



Lately I have been looking, during a few walks, at excre- 

 ment of small birds. I have found six kinds of seeds, which 

 is more than I expected. Lastly, I have had a partridge 

 with twenty-two grains of dry earth on one foot, and to my 

 surprise a pebble as big as a tare seed ; and I now under- 

 stand how this is possible, for the bird scratches itself, [and 

 the] little plumous feathers make a sort of very tenacious 

 plaister. Think of the millions of migratory quails, 1 and it 

 would be strange if some plants have not been transported 

 across good arms of the sea. 



Talking of this, I have just read your curious Raoul 

 Island paper. 2 This looks more like a case of continuous 

 land, or perhaps of several intervening, now lost, islands 

 than any (according to my heterodox notions) I have yet 

 seen. The concordance of the vegetation seems so complete 

 with New Zealand, and with that land alone. 



I have read Salter's paper and can hardly stomach it. 



1 See Origi?i, Ed. I., p. 363, where the millions of migrating quails 

 occur again. 



2 Linn. Soc. Journal, I., 1857. 



