148 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
without injury for indefinite periods, so that there is no 
difficulty in conceiving the diffusion of species wherever 
uncongenial climates, contrary currents, and other causes, 
do not interfere. All are familiar with the sight of the 
floating sea-weed 
“ Flung from the rock on ocean’s foam to sail, 
Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.” 
Remarkable accumulations of drift weed occur on each 
side of the equator in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian 
Oceans. Columbus and other navigators who first en- 
countered these banks of algae in the Northern Atlantic, 
compared them to vast inundated meadows, and state that 
they retarded the progress of their vessels. The most 
extensive bank is a little west of the meridian of Fayal, 
one of the Azores, between latitude 25° and 36°; violent 
north winds sometimes prevail in this space, and drive 
the sea-weed to low latitudes, as far as the 24th or even 
the 20th degree. 
The hollow pod-like receptacles in which the seeds of 
many algae are lodged, and the filaments attached to the 
seed-vessels of others, seem intended to give buoyancy, 
and we may observe that these hydrophytes are in gene- 
ral proliferous, so that the smallest fragment of a branch 
can be developed into a perfect plant. The seeds, more- 
over, of the greater number of species are enveloped with a 
mucous matter like that which surrounds the eggs of some 
fish, and which not only protects them from injury, but 
serves to attach them to floating bodies or to rocks. 
But we have as yet considered part only of the fertile 
resources of nature for conveying seeds to a distance from 
their place of growth. The various tribes of animals are 
busily engaged in furthering an object whence they de- 
rive such important advantages. Sometimes an express 
provision is found in the structure of seeds to enable them 
to adhere firmly by prickles, hooks, and hairs, to the 
coats of animals, or feathers of the winged tribe, to which 
they remain attached for weeks, or even months, and are 
borne along into every region whither birds or quadru- 
peds may migrate. Linnaeus enumerates fifty genera of 
plants, and the number now known to botanists is much 
greater, which are armed by hooks, by which, when ripe, 
they adhere to the coats of animals. Most of these vege- 
tables, he remarks, require a soil enriched with dung. 
Few have failed to mark the locks of wool hanging on the 
thorn-bushes, wherever the sheep pass, and it is probable 
that the wolf or lion never give chace to herbivorous ani- 
mals without being unconsciously subservient to this part 
of the vegetable economy. 
A deer has strayed from the herd, when browsing on 
some rich pasture, when he is suddenly alarmed by the 
approach of his foe. He instantly plunges through many 
a thicket, and swims through many a river and lake. The 
seeds of the herbs and shrubs adhere to his smoking flanks, 
and are washed off again by the streams. The thorny 
spray is torn off and fixes itself in his hairy coat, until 
brushed off again in other thickets and copses. Even on 
the spot where the victim is devoured, many of the seeds 
which he had swallowed immediately before the pursuit 
may be left on the ground uninjured. 
The passage, indeed, of undigested seeds through the 
stomachs of animals is one of the most efficient causes of 
the dissemination of plants, and is of all others, perhaps, 
the most likely to be overlooked. F ew are ignorant that 
a portion of the oats eaten by a horse preserve their ger- 
minating faculty in the dung. The fact of their being 
still nutritious is not lost on the sagacious rook. To many, 
says Linnaeus, it seems extraordinary, and something of 
a prodigy, that when a field is well tilled and sown with 
the best wheat, it frequently produces darnel or the wild 
oat, especially if it be manured with new dung: they do 
not consider that the fertility of the smaller seeds is not 
destroyed in the ventricles of animals. 
Some of the order of the Passeres, says Ekmarck, de- 
vour the seeds of plants in great quantities, which they 
eject again in very distant places, without destroying its 
faculty of vegetation; thus a flight of larks will fill the 
cleanest field with a great quantity of various kinds of 
plants, as the melilot trefoil ( Medicago lupulina,) and 
others whose seeds are so heavy that the wind is not able 
to scatter them to any distance. In like manner, the 
blackbird and missel-thrush, when they devour berries in 
too great quantities, are known to consign them to the 
earth undigested in their excrement. 
Pulpy fruits serve quadrupeds and birds as food, while 
their seeds, often hard and indigestible, pass uninjured 
through the intestines, and are deposited far from their 
original place of growth in a condition peculiarly fit for 
vegetation. So well are our farmers, in some parts of 
England, aware of this fact, that when they desire to raise 
a quick-set hedge in the shortest possible time, they feed 
turkeys with the haws of the common white-thorn ( Cra- 
taegus oxyacantha ,) and then sow the stones which are 
ejected in their excrement, whereby they gain an entire 
year in the growth of the plant. Birds, when they pluck 
cherries, sloes, and haws, fly away with them to some 
convenient place, and when they have devoured the fruit, 
drop the stone into the ground. Captain Cook, in his 
account of the volcanic island of Tanna, one of the New 
Hebrides, which he visited in his second voyage, makes 
the following interesting observation. “ Mr. Foster, in 
