435 Answers to 
In this manner soils gradually accumulate, and new vegetables 
appear, not by creation, nor the spontaneous effects of any ad- 
mixture of the primitive earths, hut from seeds the produce of 
former vegetable life; and to whatever depth this sand or soil 
may be buried, either by augmented accumulation or alluvial 
deposites, the seeds reposing in their native strata will remain 
for ever sound, and'fit for bursting into new existence, when dug 
up from any depth, at any future period of the world, however 
remote. 
Accumulating soils may be stored with new plants in a variety 
of ways, without having recourse to any supernatural production. 
The seeds of many plants are furnished with wings, and may be 
blown to a great distance. Birds may carry those that are de- 
stitute of the means of fying, and many a variety may be trans- 
lated from one soil to another by the wanderings of cattle. 
Many of the winged tribes brought originally from the continent 
of America to enrich the botanical gardens of France, are now 
domiciled and scattered over and beyond the confines of Europe. 
When rivers are swoln with deluging floods, break in upon their 
banks, and carry to the sea the deposites of former times, the seeds 
of a very remote period may be thrown by the tempestuous 
dashing of the raging billows high upon the banks of a verdant 
shore, and give new “life to a race of plants whose identity may 
have been extinct for many revolving ages. Even after the sur- 
face has acquired, by accumulation or otherwise, a fertility and 
richness of soil, such as to produce a covering of verdure suffi- 
ciently matted and interwoven to deny the intrusion of an a€rial 
wandering variety, the mole comes in for his share of the ge- 
neral arrangement, and, by heaving up his mouldering heaps, in- 
terposes his aid in preparing a receptacle for the air- borne exotic, 
whose birth might be claimed by soine very distant clime. Here 
a plant of another region bursts upon our noti¢e—from whence, 
we know not till the scrutiny of the botanist retrace its flight to 
the land of its nativity. 
Land gained from the waters of either the lake or the ocean, 
the deposite of rivers or of seas; the verge of gulfs, bays, or inlets, 
are the likeliest places in the world for the rise of strange plants, 
or the occurrence of such wonders as seem to astonish the natives 
of East Friesland. There is no country, however remote from — 
the sea, or however elevated above its level, but communicates’ 
by its streams with the mighty waters of the ocean. There is 
no plant, however towering its situation, even those cresting the 
highest and most distant mountains, but whose seed may be 
blown or washed into some neighbouring stream, and carried un- 
injured along with its descending waters to the main, and wafted 
by 
