SPECIES DISTRIBUTION ABOUT PLYMOUTH. oat 
stuck to its face; still I am not im a position to question this 
statement, that moths are the principal agents in the fertilisation of 
these plants. He says that in Listera the work is generally done 
by small hymenoptera; in Spiranthes by humble bees. I do not 
think bees when gathering honey so commonly confine themselves 
in each journey to a single species, as some writers favourable to 
Darwin’s views are willing to suppose. 
Birds often help plants, especially berry-bearing ones, to spread 
to spots they would never reach without their aid. In May last a 
convincing proof was afforded me of the readiness with which the 
seeds of the gooseberry vegetate when deposited by birds, through 
my finding no less than half a dozen stunted little bushes growing 
on top of a high garden wall at Plympton; and here were also a 
little currant bush, two hawthorns, a seedling from an introduced 
species of berberis, and a small plant of asparagus ; all probably 
sown by birds, since they only would be likely to bring the seeds 
of all these to such a situation. The mussel thrush, or holm 
screech, as our country lads call it, is, like most of the thrush 
tribe, a great devourer of the berries of several plants, and it is a 
well-known ornithological fact that this bird has increased greatly 
within a comparatively short period. ‘Though now a common bird, 
Col. Montagu, in his “Ornithological Dictionary,” published in 
1802, speaks of it as by no means plentiful. 
Let us turn to another bird, the common starling. Forty years 
ago, when Dr. Moore compiled his paper on the ‘ Ornithology of 
South Devon” for that early volume of our own “Transactions,” and 
‘“‘Loudon’s Magazine,” he could only say of this bird, “‘Common here 
in winter ; arriving in October, and departing in spring,” adding, 
as something out of the common, ‘but some few of them have 
been known to breed at Haldon, the seat of Sir Lawrence Palk.” 
Fifteen years later it had extended itself as a resident species 
considerably more to the west; and at the present day we have 
this bird nesting in our neighbourhood in considerable numbers, 
so that last spring it was no uncommon thing to see daily many 
individuals passing into the town with food for their young, 
collected from the adjacent fields. It is notorious that an amazing 
number of grubs and other insects are devoured by this bird ; and 
in the breeding season its destruction of them must be great 
indeed, so that its presence with us then must act as a check on 
the species forming its food, yet it is one that scarcely existed here 
