362 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. Chap. XI. 



least injure, as I know by trial, the germination of 

 seeds ; now after a bird has found and devoured a large 

 supply of food, it is positively asserted that all the grains 

 do not pass into the gizzard for 12 or even 18 hours. 

 A bird in this interval might easily be blown to the dis- 

 tance of 500 miles, and hawks are known to look out 

 for tired birds, and the contents of their torn crops 

 might thus readily get scattered. Mr. Brent informs me 

 that a friend of his had to give up flying carrier-pigeons 

 from France to England, as the hawks on the English 

 coast destroyed so many on their arrival. 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 devoured 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 pellets or passed 

 them in their excrement ; and several of these seeds 

 retained their power of germination. Certain seeds, 

 however, were always killed by this process. 



Although the beaks and feet of birds are generally 

 quite clean, I can show that earth sometimes adheres 

 to them : in one instance I removed twenty-two grains 

 of dry argillaceous earth from one foot of a partridge, 

 and in this earth there was a pebble quite as large as 



