plants. The Cross-bill , that lives on the Fir-cones, and the Hawfinch, that 
feeds on the Fine-cones, at the same time sow many of their seeds, especially 
when they carry the cone to a stone or trunk of a tree, that they may more 
easily strip it of its scales. The Rev. Mr. Robinson, in his Natural History 
of Westmoreland and Cumberland, has very particularly mentioned a thick 
grove of Oak trees, which were known to have sprung from the acorns that 
had been carried there by crows above twenty-five years ago. The Jay 
(Corvus Cri status) is also a bird very instrumental in planting of oaks , 
being very provident in laying up stores of acorns. Rumphius assures us, 
that a particular species of Figeon is very instrumental in disseminating the 
true Nutmeg in the East India islands. 
Don Garcias de Figueroa, ambassador from Spain, at the court of Sha- 
Abbas, king of Persia, relates, in the account which he has given of his 
journey, that the lofty mountains of Persia, which he crossed, and over which 
the Turcomans are continually wandering, as they tend their fleecy charge, 
were covered with a species of thorny shrub, which grew luxuriantly in the 
most parched situations. These shrubs served as a retreat to a great number 
of Grouse. I shall here take occasion to observe, that Nature employs these 
birds particularly for the purpose of sowing thorny plants in the steepest 
and most inaccessible places. They are accustomed to retire thither in the 
night time, and there they deposit, along with their dung, the stony seeds 
of the bramble berry, the eglantine berry, the barberry, and of the berries of 
most thorny shrubs, which, by relations no less wonderful, are in their sto¬ 
mach indigestible. * 
It is in this way, says Professor Barton, that the Poke (Phytolacca 
Decandra), the berries of which are eaten by the Robin, the Thrush, the 
Wild Pigeon, and many others, appear to have been so extensively diffused 
through North America. Many horse-beans, says the Rev. Gilbert White, 
in the * Naturalist’s Calendar, 5 sprang up in my field-walks in the autumn, 
and are now grown to a considerable height. As the Ewel was in beans 
* Thavernier, in his Travels, says £ that the nutmeg is so produced.’ ‘ There is a kind of bird in 
the Dutch islands, which resembles a cuckoo, and the Dutch prohibit their subjects, under pain of 
death, to kill any of them. They are called by the natives nut-eaters, and greedily devour as many 
nutmegs as their stomachs can hold, and then retire from the spot, and, feeling indigestion from the 
quantity, vomit them up, at different times, being warmed in the stomach, and besmeared with 
slime, when they never fail to take root, and produce a tree; and it is reported that none grow 
except they be first served in this manner/ Vide Sir Thomas Blount’s Nat. Hist. 
