oe 
BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 335 
the pigeon-dung as above described, had manifestly escaped by 
some very unusual accident; the fact of their appearance does but 
enforce the truth that effective pulverization is the general rule. It 
is conceivable, perhaps, that if the birds were made to eat unusual 
quantities of pulpy fruits an appreciable portion of the seeds or 
stones might pass through them undigested. Indeed, this hyphoth- 
esis seems to be the only one capable of explaining the following 
citation from Sir James E. Smith: * ‘* Pulpy fruits serve quadru- 
peds and birds as food, while their seeds, often hard and indigesti- 
ble, pass uninjured through the intestines and are deposited far 
from their original place of growth in a condition peculiarly fit for 
vegetation. So well are the farmers in some part of England 
aware of this fact that when they desire to raise a quickset hedge 
in the shortest possible time, they feed turkeys with the haws of 
the common white-thorn (Crategus oxyacantha) and then sow the 
stones which are ejected, whereby they gain an entire year in the 
growth of the plant.” 
The practice cited by Smith as formerly habitual with English 
farmers deserves to be investigated; for inasmuch as the turkey 
often feeds on acorns, pecan-nuts, and even English walnuts, it is 
evident that there is no lack of crushing power in his gizzard. In 
this respect the gizzard of the turkey would naturally be supposed 
to stand next in order to that of the proverbial ostrich, of which 
Tristram,} writing at Tuggart in the Sahara, remarks that he saw 
‘¢tame ostriches dodging among the strolling French soldiery to 
pick up the date-stones they dropped as they sauntered by.” 
Possibly the foregoing statement of Smith may have had its in- 
fluence on the following sentence of Darwin: { ‘‘ I have never seen 
an instance of nutritious (soft?) seeds passing through the in- 
testine of a bird, but hard seeds of fruit pass uninjured through 
even the digestive organs of aturkey. In the course of two months 
I picked up in my garden twelve kinds of seeds out of the excre- 
ment of small birds, and these seemed perfect and some of them 
which I tried germinated.” 
Several species of pigeons at New Guinea, the Moluccas, and 
New Hebrides have been described as swallowing the fruit of the 
* ¢¢Smith’s Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany,” p. 304. 
Copied in ‘‘ Lyell’s Principles of Geology,” p. 602 of 8th edition. 
+ In his ‘‘ The Great Sahara,” London, 1860, p. 276. 
t ‘On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,” London, 
1860, chap. XI. p. 361. 
