POPULAR BOTANY. 455 
By heavy showers of rain, producing inundation — a great number of 
different seeds will be taken up and transported from rivulets to rivers, 
and by these to the sea, and thus be wafted to distant shores, where 
under favourable circumstances they may germinate and find an asylum. 
Another agency for this distribution we find in birds. These are 
in the habit of using berries for nourishment ; they swallow them 
frequently without crushing the kernel. And as the digestive power of 
their stomach is not sufficient to destroy the vitality of the germ, and 
they sometimes fly to great distances before these undigested seeds are 
discharged through the natural channel ; these seeds are frequently 
found to germinate and thrive in parts far away from the place where 
the berries were swallowed. Amateur gardeners in Sicily are in the 
habit of shooting migrating birds which return early in spring from Ara- 
bia, and to sow the contents of their stomachs, with the purpose of raising 
in this very manner new Arabian flowers for their gardens. 
The same case will sometimes, though more seldom, occur with 
quadrupeds. But animals contribute to the distribution of seeds in 
other wayd. Some seeds such as the burdock, agrimony, Bidens, &c, 
are provided with barbs. When animals come in contact w 7 ith those 
seeds, they become fastened to the hair or wool, and thus they are 
carried often for a length of time, and frequently are not deposited 
before the hair or wool drops off. Sometimes such animals, covered 
with seeds, are killed, and their hair, wool, or hides exported to foreign 
countries. In cleaning these products, the seeds are often cast into the 
rubbish of the street, and thence they find their way into the fields, 
where under favourable conditions, they successfully germinate and 
occupy a new home. In this way many Asiatic plants were imported 
in camel hair; many South American ones in the hides of oxen and the 
wool of the alpaca, &c, and many Russian plants in Northern furs. 
Plants are furthermore distributed by the elasticity of their seed- 
capsules. In approaching maturity, or when the capsules have attained 
a certain degree of hardness, the cohesion of parts will be broken, as that 
part immediately containing the seeds rolls itself up with great rapidity 
and a sort of spiral contraction, by which process the seeds are scattered 
about for a distance of sometimes ten yards, and even more. To this 
class belongs our common lady's slipper, Fraxineila, sweet peas, &c. 
Another and peculiar process by which seeds are scattered abroad 
occurs with the Momordica Elaterium, a plant used in the old school of 
medicine, and which is one of the cucumber tribe. On approaching 
maturity the juice of this cucumber undergoes fermentation to such a 
degree that the contents of the same, pulps, seeds, fluids and gases are 
thrown off through the aperture of the fruit stalk with such force as to 
reach sometimes a distance of fifteen yards. This will happen, also, if 
the ripe fruit is pressed by a too careless handling, so that the unin- 
atructed may be served a severe practical joke, and find themselves much 
