Chap XX.] DlSTRtl;UTlON OF SEEDS 1]V I;lRl)S. 453 



It seems to me possible that these birds may carry Alpine 

 plants as seeds and spores attached to their feathers from one 

 island to another, for great distances. They make their holes 

 in the ground where it is densely covered with herbage, and 

 often become covered with vegetable mould. The Procellaridce, 

 widely wandering as they are, have probably had a great deal 

 to do with the wide distribution of much of the Antarctic flora. 

 Grisebach* lays stress on the range of the Albatross {Dioinedea) 

 from Cape Horn to the Kurile Islands, as possibly accounting 

 for the occurrence of Northern species of plants amongst the 

 Southern flora, and also the wide range of the Antarctic flora. 

 He supposes the seeds, however, to be swallowed by the Alba- 

 tross, with its food, after being washed down into the sea by 

 rivers, and perhaps swallowed by fish. 



When I mentioned, in conversation, to Mr. Darwin, the 

 matter of the birds possibly picking up seeds whilst nesting, 

 and so conveying them, he at once objected that at nesting 

 time these l)irds, like all others, do not wander, and do not fly 

 to a fresh nesting place directly after nesting. It seems to 

 me, however, that though this objection is almost fatal to the 

 suggestion, birds may occasionally leave an island with moun- 

 tain seeds attached, and alight in the higher parts of a distant 

 island from habit. The fact that they do nest amidst the 

 mountain flora is at all events to be noted. 



\\'ith regard to the Albatross, it is to be noted that at Tristan 

 da Cunha these birds nest in the terminal crater, at a height 

 of 8,000 feet. Former Albatrosses may have nested in high 

 tropical mountains ; the plants are possibly very much older 

 than the present species of Albatrosses. The great Albatross 

 has, on a very few occasions, been found as a straggler, north 

 of the equator in the Atlantic, and has reached Europe. It is 

 most extraordinary that the bird has not established itself 

 permanently in the Northern Atlantic. The genus, probably, 

 once extended north in the Atlantic, as it does in the Pacific, 

 for a form possibly ancestral has been described by Prof 

 Owen as Cimoliornis dio/ziedeiis, a fossil bird nearly allied to 

 Bionicdea, which occurs in the lower chalk at Maidstone. f 

 The immense rapidity of birds' flight must always be borne in 

 mind in considering their aid in distribution of plants. A 

 journey of 4,000 miles, at 40 miles an hour, is only four days' 

 and nights' flight. 



As the date of sailing of the ship was uncertain, we were 

 obliged to give up the attempt to reach Papeno Valley, and we 



* A. Grisebach, "Vegetation der Erde," Bd. II., S. 496. 

 f " Trans. Geol. Soc," 2nd Series VI., Tab. 39, fig. 2. "Quart. Journ.," 

 1846, II., p. lOI. 



