6 MY ISLANDS. 



bushes. But I gradually discovered, in the course of a 

 few centuries, that these heavy nuts never floated se- 

 curely so far as the outskirts of my little archipelago ; and 

 that consequently no chestnuts, apple trees, beeches, 

 alders, larches, or pines ever came to diversify my island 

 valleys. The seeds that did really reach us from time to 

 time belonged rather to one or other of four special 

 classes. Either they were very small and light, like the 

 spores of ferns, fungi, and club-mosses; or they were 

 winged and feathery, like dandelion and thistle-down ; 

 or they were the stones of fruits that are eaten by birds, 

 like rose-hips and hawthorn ; or they were chaffy grains, 

 enclosed in papery scales, like grasses and sedges, of a 

 kind well adapted to be readily borne on the surface 

 of the water. In all these ways new plants did really 

 get wafted by slow degrees to the islands ; and if they 

 were of kinds adapted to the climate they grew and 

 flourished, living down the first growth of ferns and 

 flowerless herbs in the rich valleys. 



The time which it took to people my archipelago with 

 these various plants was, of course, when judged by 

 your human standards, immensely long, as often the 

 group received only a single new addition in the lapse of 

 two or three centuries. But I noticed one very curious 

 result of this haphazard and lengthy mode of stocking 

 the country : some of the plants which arrived the 

 earliest, having the coast all clear to themselves, free 

 from the fierce competition to which they had always 

 boon exposed on the mainland of Europe, began to sport 

 a great deal in various directions, and being acted upon 

 here by new conditions, soon assumed under stress of 



