146 MEAKS OF DISPERSAL. [Chap. XII. 



have never seen an instance of nutritious seeds passing 

 through the intestines of a bird; but hard seeds of fruit 

 pass uninjured through even the digestive organs of a 

 turkey. In the course of two months, I picked up in 

 my garden 12 kinds of seeds, out of the excrement of 

 small birds, and these seemed perfect, and some of 

 them, which were tried, germinated. But the following 

 fact is more important: the crops of birds do not secrete 

 gastric juice, and do not, as I know by trial, injure in 

 the least 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 twelve or even eighteen hours. A bird in 

 this interval might easily be blown to the distance 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. 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 germi- 

 nated 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 fre- 

 quently 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 re- 

 jected the seeds in pellets or passed them in their excre- 



