Tlic Distribution of Plants. 
Says the Popular Science News : What an 
industrious seed-sowing and plant-distrib¬ 
utor Nature is never tiring, never ending, 
always busy, since she undertook the prime- 
mal contract under which she still keeps 
the surface of the earth well covered with 
vegetation. Her method of procedure has 
always been to sow seeds upon seeds, so as 
to avoid the possibility of any portion of the 
earth remaining long unplanted. When 
any spot of earth becomes bare by accident, 
it is Nature’s part to replant it; and this 
she does by means of several devices, ac¬ 
cording to the circumstance. When the top 
has been removed from any cause,—as in 
case of a bit of a pasture stripped for a lawn, 
or of a railway-cutting, or of forest land 
in which the trees have been burnt, blown, 
or cut down,—she has several methods of 
seeding the ground anew. When volcanic 
islands rise above the surface of the sea, 
baie and seedless, she finds several ways of 
sending thither the seeds best adapted to 
the site, sending them by wing or wind, 
and sometimes floating them by sea, by 
means of some convenient current of the 
ocean. 
Nature employs birds largely in planting 
of this kind. The fruit eating birds are 
great planters of stone fruits, and other 
biids aie continually planting seeds which 
pass through their bodies in a state fit for 
germination. And the same unconscious 
planters remove the seeds of plants to new 
sites by other means beside that afforded by 
the inside passage. Darwin experimented 
on some earth adhering to the feet of par¬ 
tridges and woodcocks, and found that it 
contained numerous plants of several spe¬ 
cies. Six ounces and -three-fourths of mud 
taken from the edge of a little pond, and 
carefully treated under glass, produced 
three hundred and thirty six distinct plants, 
which wild ducks might carry long dis¬ 
tances sometimes. Many seeds have cusped 
awns, hooks, or prickles, which readily 
attach them to the feathers of birds; and a 
large number of aquatic birds, which are 
great wanderers and seed-planters, nest 
inland on the ground. Migratory birds 
neipea to scatter seeds attached te 
their feet by earth. 
Darwin states that he picked up twelve 
kinds of seeds in his garden out of the ex¬ 
crements of small birds. The crops of birds 
do not secrete gastric juice, which might 
prevent germination; and the seeds are 
sometimes eighteen hours before they enter 
the gizzard, where the softer and more 
nutritions sorts, such as grain, would be 
effectually ground down. In the interval, 
a bird might be carried on the “wings” of a 
strong wind five hundred miles; and, as 
hawks seek for tired birds, it might be taken 
by them, its crop torn, and the centents 
scattered. The stomachs of those hawks 
and owls which bolt their prey whole have 
been examined, and oats, -wheat, millet, 
hemp, canary, clover, and beet found there 
have germinated. 
Fiesh-water fish eat seeds of many land 
as well as water plants; and then, having 
given their bodies to fishing eagles and 
storks, the seeds have passed into the earth, * 
and have grown. Some farmers at Natal 
came to the conclusion that certain inju¬ 
rious seeds were planted in their grass-land 
by the flight of locusts passing overhead. 
Darwin accordingly examined some of the 
diied pellets of locust-dung, and found 
some seeds, from which he raised seven 
grass-plants: so that a swarm of locusts 
passing over some solitary island lying far 
off in the sea, and naked, might bring to it 
the seed of its first grass-crops, and other 
birds might bring other plants; and we 
should expect to find there the flora of the 
nearest continent, or the most convenient 
to birds. The Azores answer this descrip¬ 
tion; their flora resembling that of Southern 
Europe, while the seeds of their flowering 
plants are of a kind easily transported by 
wind, by birds, or by currents. There are 
oaks, chestnuts, hazels, apples, beeches, 
alders, firs, the Portugal laural, myrtle 
laurustinus, and elder—all small-berry 
bearers. Trees with heavy seeds are con¬ 
spicuous by their absence. Icebergs are 
among the seed bearers and planters of our 
own times. The Gulf Stream has carried 
cocoanuts and seed of hickory across the 
Atlantic to the shores of Shetland, where 
they have not sprung up, in consequence of 
