GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANIC BEINGS. 117 



is positively asserted that all the 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 five 

 hundred 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 hours, 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 having been from twelve to twenty-one hours in the 

 stomachs of different birds of prey ; and two seeds of 

 beet grew after having been thus retained for two days 

 and fourteen hours. Fresh-water fish, I find, eat seeds 

 of many land and water plants : fish are frequently de- 

 voured by birds, and thus the seeds might be transported 

 from place to place. I forced many kinds of seeds into 

 the stomachs of dead fish, and then gave their bodies to 

 fishing-eagles, storks, and pelicans ; these birds, after an 

 interval of many hours, either rejected the seeds in pel- 

 lets or passed them in their excrement ; and several of 

 these seeds retained the power of germination. Certain 

 seeds, however, were always killed by this process. 



Locusts are sometimes blown to great distances from 

 the land ; I myself caught one three hundred and seventy 

 miles from the coast of Africa, and have heard of others 

 caught at greater distances. 



As icebergs are known to be sometimes 



^ ■ loaded with earth and stones, and have even 



carried brushwood, bones, and the nest of a land-bird, it 



can hardly be doubted that they must occasionally, as 



suggested by Lyell, have transported seeds from one part 



