ANIMAL AGENCY. 89 



copses. Even on the spot where the victim is devoured, many 

 of the seeds which he had swallowed immediately before the 

 chase may be left on the ground uninjured and ready to spring 

 up in a new soil. 



The passage, indeed, of undigested seeds through the stomachs 

 of animals is one of the most efficient causes of the dissemina- 

 tion of plants. Thus, a flight of larks will fill the cleanest 

 field with a great quantity of various kinds of plants, as the 

 melilot, trefoil, and others, whose seeds are so heavy that the 

 wind is not able to scatter them to any distance. Pulpy fruits 

 serve quadrupeds and birds as food, while their seeds, often 

 hard and indigestible, pass uninjured through the intestines? 

 and are deposited far from their original place of growth, in a 

 condition peculiary fit for vegetation. In this manner the 

 Gruava-tree, first introduced into the island of Tahiti about half 

 a century ago, has been so copiously disseminated by the birds 

 and cattle as to become the plague of the country. In their 

 greedy attempts to monopolise the spice trade, the Dutch 

 endeavoured to confine the Nutmeg-tree to the narrow precincts 

 of Banda, by extirpating it on all other islands where it 

 naturally grew ; but their baseness was defeated by the wild 

 pigeons, who, dropping the undigested nuts in their excursions 

 over the Moluccas and neighbouring islands, continually showed 

 them that man cannot possibly succeed when striving against 

 the intentions of nature. 



The sudden deaths to which great numbers of frugivorous 

 birds are annually exposed must not be omitted, as auxiliary 

 to the transportation of seeds to new habitations. When the 

 ebbing sea withdraws from the shore, and leaves fruits and 

 seeds on the beach or in the mud of estuaries, it might by the 

 returning tide wash them away again, or destroy them by long 

 immersions ; but when they are gathered by land-birds which 

 frequent the sea-side, or by waders and water-fowl, they are 

 often borne inland ; and if the bird to whose crop they have 

 been consigned is killed, they may be left to grow up far from 

 the sea. Let such an accident happen but once in a century, 

 it will be sufficient to spread many of the plants from one 

 continent to another ; for in estimating the activity of these 

 causes, we must not consider whether they act slowly in relation 



