14 HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. 



us (Zoologist, 1888) that, when living on the island 

 of Barbadoes, an alligator arrived one day on the 

 shore, and at the same time a tree measuring 40 feet 

 in length, which was recognised as a Demerara species, 

 was likewise stranded. He thinks that there can be 

 no doubt that the alligator, which was alive when it 

 reached Barbadoes, was transported by the tree, thus 

 covering a distance of 250 miles from the nearest 

 land. Numerous observations on the accidental 

 transportal of seeds and tree-trunks from one island 

 to another, and from a continent to an island, have 

 been recorded, and even on our own shores we may 

 witness the occasional arrival of such vegetable pro- 

 ducts from a far distant land. On the west coast of 

 Ireland it not unfrequently happens that large West 

 Indian beans are stranded, and in this as well as in 

 many other similar cases the seeds have often proved 

 none the worse for their prolonged immersion in sea- 

 water. That locusts are sometimes blown to great 

 distances from the land is not so surprising, since 

 their power of steering through the air is very limited. 

 Darwin mentions (p. 327) having caught one 370 

 miles from the coast of Africa, and that swarms of 

 them sometimes visited Madeira. Sir Charles Lyell 

 relates that green rafts composed of canes and brush- 

 wood are occasionally carried down the Parana River 

 in South America by inundations, bearing on them 

 the tiger, cayman, squirrels, and other quadrupeds. 



But though actual observations of such abnormal 

 instances of the dispersal of animals are few, many 



