ON THE MODES OF DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. 371 



being disseminated but by tbe birds ; these, swallowing the berries, 

 use the pulp and cast the stone on branches of trees with bark suitable 

 for their growth, where they take root and flourish. That the vitality 

 of many seeds is not at all impaired by this process of passing through 

 the stomachs of birds has been incontestably proved. Indeed, it is 

 said that, when the farmers of some parts of England are desirous of 

 making a hedge of hawthorn ( Crataegus oxyocantha) grow in a short 

 time, they feed the haws to their turkeys ; the stones are rejected in 

 the excrement, and when collected and planted a whole year is gained 

 in the growth of the plant.* It is also known by experiments that 

 seeds in the crops of birds are not always injured ; for the crop does 

 not secrete gastric juice, and, as it is often not until twelve or eighteen 

 hours after the act of swallowing that the food passes into the stomach, 

 birds which are capable of rapid and prolonged flight could pass over 

 a large tract of land or of sea. Passenger pigeons have been killed in 

 the neighborhood of New York with their crops still full of rice col- 

 lected by them in the rice-fields of Georgia and Carolina. As it is 

 positively asserted that they will decompose food in less than twelve 

 hours, they must have traveled three or four hundred miles in less 

 than six hours. f This is by no means an extravagant estimate, but 

 rather under the mark. Falcons are reckoned the swiftest of all 

 birds. It is recorded that one, sent from the Canaries to Spain, re- 

 turned to the Peak of Teneriffe in six hours, a distance of about 

 seven hundred and eighty miles.J Seeds of wheat, oats, millet, Ca- 

 nary hemp, clover, and beet, germinated after being twelve to twenty- 

 one hours in the stomach of birds of prey ; and two seeds of beet 

 germinated after having been thus retained for two days and four- 

 teen hours. Seeds taken out of the crop of a pigeon, which had 

 floated on artificial sea- water for thirty days, nearly all gei - minated.|| 

 Hawks are always on the lookout for weary birds, those which have 

 made long journeys ; and pigeons and ducks coming from over the sea, 

 as they are often known to do, would be easily caught and devoured by 

 these birds. The bodies are devoured, and the contents of the crop per- 

 haps scattered in a locality favorable to the development of any seeds 

 which might be contained therein. Darwin forced seeds of various 

 kinds into the stomachs of dead fish which were then given to eagles, 

 storks, and pelicans. These birds, after an interval of many hours, 

 passed the seeds in their excrement, or else rejected them in pellets, 

 and several of them were then capable of germination. Some kinds, 

 however, were invariably killed by the process.^ 



Besides this method there is still another. This is by means of dirt 

 or dried mud adhering to the legs and feet of birds. Still drawing on 

 that cyclopaedia of learning, Darwin's " Origin of Species," we read : ** 



* Lycll, " Principles of Geology," vol. ii., p. 398. f Audubon. 



% Figuier, " Reptiles and Birds," p. 193. Darwin, he. cit., p. 327. 



I Darwin, p. 326. 1 Darwin, ibid., p. 327. ** P. 328. 



