THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 
153 
drink, though we could at all times taste the salt ou 
our lips. Salt was rarely used at table, and our host 
told us that his cattle invariably refused it when it was 
offered them, they got so much with their grass and at 
every breath, but he said that a sick horse or one just 
from the country would sometimes take a hearty draught 
of salt water, and seemed to like it and be the better 
for it. 
It was surprising to see how much water was con¬ 
tained in the terminal bud of the sea-side golden rod, 
standing in the sand early in July, and also how turnips, 
beets, carrots, &c., flourished even in pure sand. A man 
travelling by the shore near there not long before us 
noticed something green growing in the pure sand of the 
beach, just at high-water mark, and on approaching found 
it to be a bed of beets flourishing vigorously, probably 
from seed washed out of the Franklin. Also beets and 
turnips came up in the sea-weed used for manure in 
many parts of the Cape. This suggests how various 
plants may have been dispersed over the world to distant 
islands and continents. Vessels, with seeds in their car¬ 
goes, destined for particular ports, where perhaps they 
were not needed, have been cast away on desolate islands, 
and though their crews perished, some of their seeds have 
been preserved. Out of many kinds a few would find 
a soil and climate adapted to them, — become naturalized 
and perhaps drive out the native plants at last, and so fit 
the land for the habitation of man. It is an ill wind that 
blov^’s nobody any good, and for the time lamentable 
shipwrecks may thus contribute a new vegetable to a 
continent’s stock, and prove on the whole a lasting bless¬ 
ing to its inhabitants. Or winds and currents might 
effect the same without the intervention of man. What 
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