556 THE UNIVERSE. 



Some years ago, Th6iard, the chemist, presented to the 

 Academy of Sciences one of these wandering plants, 

 which had been carried away from the summit of Mount 

 Ararat, and been l)orne by the wind to a great distance 

 from the celebrated mountain. In the countries where it 

 had been strewed upon the soil, people maintained that 

 it had come from lieaven. This rain of plants sometimes 

 forms in those places a layer five or six inches thick. 

 Men feed upon it, and what they cannot consume is given 

 to the cattle. 



Some seeds, too weighty to be carried by the winds, 

 accomplish long voyages by sea, and, borne by the cur- 

 rents and waves, traverse oceans. The cocoa-nuts of the 

 Seychelles, protected by their woody coverings, are carried 

 away by regular currents, and arrive at the coast of Mala- 

 bar, after performing a journey of more than 400 leagues 

 by Avater. The Hindoos, astonished at this unexpected 

 fecundity, Avhich is renewed every year, can only explain 

 it by supposing that the depths of ocean nourish the trees 

 which produce those enormous fruits. 



The hard fruit of the cocoa-palm, the immense husks 

 of the climbing Mimosa, which are often more than a 

 metre (three feet three inches in round numbers) in length, 

 and many other fruits from Equatorial America, torn 

 away by the waves and cradled liy the storms, are fre- 

 cpently stranded on the shores of vScandinavia, where 

 the want of heat and light is the sole obstacle to their 

 development. 



The regular currents of the sea also bear to a distance 

 certain cosmopolitan plants, for the most part the offspring 

 of seeds, the impermeable envelope of which for a long 

 time resists the action of Avater. Thus the great current 

 which springs from the eastern coast of South America, 



