322 Poachers and Poaching. 



Ocean currents have not unfrequently been 

 the means of connecting the floras of different 

 continents, and seeds and fruit are sometimes 

 picked up on the western coasts of Britain which 

 have been wafted across the whole Atlantic 

 Ocean. It is also known that certain birds of 

 long and sustained powers of flight cross the 

 Atlantic unaided, and what this may possibly 

 mean will presently be shown. Even land 

 animals are known to cross straits between 

 island and island upon rafts drift-wood or bits 

 of floating bark. 



A quaint instance of transportation of fish 

 spawn is given by an old writer. Izaak Walton 

 believed that pike were bred from pickerel- 

 weed ; though he seems to have had some 

 suspicion of this piece of unnatural history, and 

 qualifies his statement by saying that if it is not 

 so " they are brought into some ponds some such 

 other ways as is past man's finding out." But 

 one of his contemporaries attacks this hetero- 

 doxy, and " propounds a rational conjecture of 

 the heron-shaw." He thinks it quite likely that 

 while fishing the heron might " lap some spawn 

 about her legs, in regard to adhering to the segs 

 and bull-rushes near the shallows, as myself and 

 others without curiosity, have observed. And 

 this slimy substance adhering to her legs, and she 

 mounting the air for another station, in all pro- 

 bability mounts with her. When note, the next 



