PREFACE. Vll 



fossils in regions far removed from the lands now in- 

 habited by their living representatives, I am especially- 

 interested in Mr. Kew's attempt to bring together all 

 that is known of the means of dispersal of one of the 

 groups as to which such information was most needed. 

 He has devoted to the task much labour and research, 

 and has brought together a mass of information of 

 great value. Many of the facts he adduces are so 

 curious and interesting that they will attract the atten- 

 tion of many classes of readers and thus lead, it is to be 

 hoped, to the accumulation of facts which are still 

 required to complete our knowledge of this important 

 subject. 



I heartily congratulate the author on his choice of so 

 useful and interesting an inquiry for his first work, and 

 on the systematic and accurate manner in which he has 

 marshalled the facts he has collected. Many books of 

 far greater pretension, even though they should contain 

 descriptions of scores of new species and work out their 

 internal structure with the greatest accuracy, may yet 

 be of less interest to the philosophical • naturalist than 

 this unpretending little volume. In its pages we are 

 afforded a glimpse of what seem at first sight to be 

 but trifles and accidents in nature's workshop, but which 

 are really the tools with which she produces some of her 

 most striking results. It is owing to such trifling occur- 

 rences as the occasional attachment of a living shell to 

 a beetle's leg, or the conveyance of seeds in the mud 

 adhering to a bird's foot, that many remote islands 

 have become stocked with life, and the range of species 



