78 The Food of Some British Wild Birds. 



in rocks, or in the earth, or in some other secret hiding-place of the 

 kind, and that such fruits and seeds as they conceal there are liable 

 to be left permanently for one reason or another. The hiding-place 

 iray be forgotten, or, as is still more likely, the creature that 

 occupied it may fall a victim to a bird of prey. The fruits and 

 seeds may then germinate in the place of concealment, and, inas- 

 much as the latter is always more or less distant from the spot 

 whence the fruits were taken, this must also be accounted one of 

 the modes of dispersion of the plants in question. I have myself 

 observed this curious phenomenon also in the case of the dissemina- 

 tion of the arolla Pine (Pinus cembra) by nutcrackers, of beeches, 

 oaks, and hazels by jays, and of hazels by squirrels." 



Pycraft (99) refers to the valuable evidence on this subject 

 brought together by Kidley, ' ' who found that in the Malay 

 Archipelago the principal carriers were bulbuls, the dark-blue 

 starling (Calornis chalybca), the minah (Mainatus savatus), and the 

 horn-bills (Buceros, Anthracoceros, etc.), the latter being especially 

 fond of the nutmeg. The parrots of the genus Palaeornis also 

 aided in this work. The granivorous finches of the genus Munia 

 he found aided considerably in the dispersal of adhesive seeds, 

 which were carried about by the feathers and finally dropjped. He 

 states, on the authority of Mr. G. Clunies Ross, that on Cocos 

 Islands "when boobies are not nesting, and have consequently 

 left, the frigate-birds (Tachypetes aquila) are unable to procure their 

 ordinary food, which consists of fish taken from the boobies, and 

 that they then swallow seeds of Guilandina and beans which they 

 find floating on the sea, and on flying to the land vomit them up 

 again, apparently merely using them to fill up temporarily empty 

 crops!" 



Darwin* mentions that : ' ' In the course of two months I picked 

 up in my garden twelve kinds of seeds., out of the excrement of 

 small birds, and these seemed perfect, and some of them, which 

 were tried, germinated. But the following fact is more important : 

 the crops of birds do not secrete gastric juice, and do not, as I 

 know by trial, injure in the least the germination of seeds ; now, after 

 a bird has found and devoured a large supply of food, it *s posi- 

 tively asserted that all grains do not pass into the gizzard for 

 twelve or even eighteen hours. A bird in this interval might easily 

 be blown to the distance of 500 miles, and hawks are known to look 

 out for tired birds, and the contents of their torn crops might thus 

 readily get scattered. Some hawks and owls bolt their prey whole, 

 and, after an interval of from twelve to twenty houi-s, disgorge 

 pellets, which, as I know from experiments made in the Zoological 

 Gardens, include seeds capable of germination. Some seeds of the 

 oat, wheat, millet, canary, hemp, clover, and beet germinated after 



Origin of Species, 6th ed. 1902, p. 510. 



