60 LEAVES PROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



on earth, for -most of them have still some wild rela- 

 tions on the high table lands of Middle Asia, where, in 

 primitive fierceness, strength, and beauty, they rove about, 

 and race for hundreds of miles along the valleys to ex- 

 change exhausted lands for new rich pastures. 



Animals, like plants, travel occasionally by means of 

 the various agents whom nature herself places at their 

 disposal. The giant rivers of the earth, the Ganges, 

 Congo, Amazon, Orinoco, and Mississippi, annually float 

 islands towards the ocean, covered with living inhabitants. 

 Nothing is more common than to meet out at sea, thous- 

 ands of miles from all land, masses of fucus floating on 

 the surface of the water, and serving as a resting-place 

 for small shell-fish, unable to transport themselves by 

 swimming, far from their native shore. Off the Moluccas 

 and Philippines, sailors often meet, after a typhoon, with 

 floating islands of matted wood, full of life, and covered 

 with large trees, so as to deceive their eyes, and to en- 

 danger the safety of their vessels. Trunks of trees, also, 

 are found drifting in the great currents of the ocean, 

 perforated from end to end by the larvae of insects, and 

 filled with the eggs of molluscs and fishes. At other 

 times they have been known to convey lizards and birds 

 from land to land, and on the island of San Vincent 

 there appeared once a huge boa constrictor, twisted around 

 a large, healthy cedar-tree, with which it had been torn 

 from its home in the primeval forests of Brazil. It 

 swallowed several sheep before it could be killed by the 

 astonished natives. The gulf-stream, it is well known, 

 carried, more than once, dead bodies of an unknown race 



