Living birds can hardly fail to be highly effective agents in the transportation of seeds.

I could give many facts showing how frequently birds of many kinds are blown by gales to vast distances across the ocean.

We may safely assume that under such circumstances their rate of flight would often be thirty-five miles an hour; and some authors have given a far higher estimate.

I have never seen an instance of nutritious seeds passing through the intestines of a bird; but hard seeds of fruit pass uninjured through even the digestive organs of a turkey.

In the course of two months, I picked up in my garden twelve kinds of seeds, out of the excrement of small birds, and these seemed perfect, and some of them, which were tried, germinated.