130 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



of the Hebrides. The gigantic cocoa-nut itself, weighing 

 not rarely more than five pounds, but air-tight in its close 

 shell, and buoyant by its light fibrous coat, is thus drifted 

 from island to island, and rides safely on the surges of 

 the ocean from the Seychelles to the distant coast of 

 Malabar. There it lodges, and germinates in the light 

 moist sand, so that the Indians of old fancied that they 

 grew under water, and called them sea-cocoas. A still 

 more striking provision of nature is this, that there are 

 some seeds of this kind so exquisitely adjusted to their 

 future destination, as to sink in salt water, while they swim 

 with safety in sweet water. 



Large vegetable masses even travel on the great waters 

 of the ocean. Compact fields of marine plants are occa- 

 sionally met with in the southern seas, and on the coast 

 of Florida, large enough to impede the progress of vessels, 

 and filled with millions of crustacese. They are not un- 

 frequently so firm and so extensive as to afford a building 

 place for the nests of aquatic birds and even for quadru- 

 peds, who thus float at the mercy of wind and waves to 

 their new unknown home. Amid the Philippine Islands, 

 also, after a typhoon, floating islands are fallen in with, 

 consisting of matted plants and wood, with tall, old trees, 

 growing on them. These strange, insular rafts, are carried 

 along by swift currents, or wafted onward by the slightest 

 breath of air which fans the foliage of their dense woods, 

 until, after a passage of weeks or months, they land, like 

 a new ark, on some distant shore. The very plants of 

 our fields, that sustain our life, are there only because 

 man has been compelled to take them with him on his 



