RELATIONS TO ANIMATE ENVIRONMENT in 



of birds is much more satisfactory. We may begin with the 

 now historic case, cited by Darwin, of the leg of a Red-legged 

 Partridge which was found encased in a ball of earth, as a result 

 of injury to the foot. This foot was submitted to Darwin by 

 Professor Newton, who suggested that it might afford some in- 

 teresting facts in the matter of the relation of birds to seed dis- 

 persal. And this proved to be the case, for, as is recorded in the 

 Origin of Species, this ball of earth, which weighed six ounces, 

 and had been kept for no less than three years, " when broken, 

 watered, and placed under a bell-glass, [produced] no less than 

 eighty-two plants . . . : these consisted of twelve monocotyledons, 

 including the common oat, and at least one kind of grass, and of 

 seventy dicotyledons, which consisted, judging from the young 

 leaves, of at least three distinct species ". This, of course, was 

 a quite abnormal case ; but Darwin had already collected much 

 evidence on this point. Thus he in one case removed sixty- 

 one grains, and in another twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous 

 earth from the foot of a Partridge. And again, from the shank 

 of a Woodcock, he removed a little cake of earth, weighing 

 only nine grains, and this contained a seed of the toad-rush 

 {/uncus bufonis) which germinated and flowered. 



The botantist Kerner has since brought to light additional 

 evidence on this subject. He remarks : " The extraordinary oc- 

 currence on the edges of ponds in Southern Bohemia of the 

 tiny Coleanthus suhtilis, which is indigenous to India, and the 

 sudden appearance of the same species of grass in the West of 

 France about twenty years ago, may be unhesitatingly attributed 

 to the mode of dispersion in question ; as may also the occur- 

 rence of the tropical Scirpus atropurpurcits on the shores of the 

 Lake of Geneva, and that of the southern native Aiiagn/lis 

 tenella on the shores of the Schwarzsee at Kitzbiihel in North 

 Tyrol." He also gives an instance of the case of a Little Owl 

 {Athene noctud), which in catching mice brushed against worm- 

 wood-bushes {Artemisia), and when it flew away was all be- 

 smeared with the fruits which had been rendered sticky by a 

 previous shower of rain. A similar case is recorded by Dr. 

 H. O. Forbes in his Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, 

 where two species of Heron {Herodias nigripes) and Doniegretta 

 sacra breeding in " West Island " — Cocos Keeling Group Is- 

 lands — nest on high Pisonia trees, and often, in consequence, 



