THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 523 



Some years ago, Thenard, the chemist, presented to the 

 Academy of Sciences one of these wandering plants, which 

 had been carried away from the summit of Mount Ararat, 

 and been borne by the wind to a great distance from the 

 celebrated mountain. In the countries where it had been 

 strewed upon the soil, people maintained that it had come 

 from heaven. This rain of plants sometimes forms in 

 those places a layer five or six inches thick. Men feed 

 upon it, and what they cannot consume is given to the 

 cattle. 



Some seeds, too weighty to be carried by the winds, ac- 

 complish long voyages by sea, and, borne by the currents 

 and waves, traverse oceans. The cocoa-nuts of the Sey- 

 chelles, protected by their woody coverings, are carried 

 away by regular currents, and arrive at the coast of Mala- 

 bar, after performing a journey of more than 400 leagues 

 by water. The Hindoos, astonished at this unexpected 

 fecundity, which is renewed every year, can only explain 

 it by supposing that the depths of ocean nourish the trees 

 which produce those enormous fruits. 



The hard fruit of the cocoa-palm, the immense husks of 

 the climbing Mimosa, which are often more than three feet 

 in length, and many other fruits from Equatorial America, 

 torn away by the waves and cradled by the storms, are fre- 

 quently stranded on the shores of Scandinavia, where the 

 want of heat and light is the sole obstacle to their develop- 

 ment. 



The regular currents of the sea also bear to a distance 

 certain cosmopolitan plants, for the most part the offspring 

 of seeds, the impermeable envelope of which for a long time 



