species of heath, which have emigrated from the South of Africa to the botanical houses of France and England. If a botanist of Guiana should discover the marsh marica, or the scarlet manettia, blushing among those flowers of Lapland, which spring up so magically upon the breaking up of the frost, and the melting of the snow, he would be as much astonished, as the Laplander would be to hear, that his moss andromeda or his diapensia were common in Ethiopia. The orange-thorned nightshade, which is so beautiful in Madagascar, will never bloom near the Finmark primrose; nor will the various species of the banksia, hakea, or dryandria of New Holland, grow near the flexuous honeysuckle, spindle-tree, or threeleaved bumalda of Japan. CHAPTER XIV. THE manner, in which distant islands become planted with trees, shrubs, and flowers, is exceedingly curious. The Pacific Islands afford instances, from which the various methods may be successfully developed. How European and American fruits came to be naturalized in some of those islands is sufficiently obvious. Some have been carried thither by accident; some for delight; and others for subsistence. Some have been mixed with other seeds; and thus been transported against the will and wish of the transporters; as darnel amongst rye, and melilot amongst wheat. Cook planted the pine-apple and melon in Eooa; on Christmas Island yams and cocoas; on Lefooga melons, pumpkins, and Indian corn. Vancouver planted water-cresses and vine-cuttings in New Holland; on the Island of Cocos peas, beans, apples, melons, and peach-stones. Captain Colneth had previously left a variety of garden-seeds. On other islands he had also introduced the almond. Wilson planted the breadfruit-tree on the Palmerstone Islands. This tree, so abundant in its useful qualities, is yet held in little esteem in the islands of India'. In Otaheite successive navigators have introduced various species of plants and vegetables: and other islands have been benefited in a similar manner. But the mode, in which these islands became rich in what we now call native plants, is a subject of some difficulty. Let us endeavour to explain it. One of the circumstances, on which Columbus and his crew founded their hopes of being near land, was that of the Nigna taking up a branch, the red berries of which were as fresh, as if they had been taken immediately from the tree. Philips, also, in his voyage to Botany Bay, saw a great number of cocoa-nuts, floating at a great distance from shore. And Captain Tuckey 3 found several floating patches of reeds and trees, forty leagues from the African coast. Near one of the Aleutian Islands Lieutenant Kotzebue picked up the log of a camphor-tree: and fell in with an iceberg, having a portion of its surface lined with earth; in which grew trees and other vegetable sub 3 1 Crawford's Indian Archipelago, i. p. 418. Near Cape Musseldom the Indians throw cocoa-nuts, flowers, fruits, ard branches into the sea, in order to insure a quick passage, and a safe voyage. Narrative, p. 55, 4to. stances. There were, also, the large remains of an animal, which he supposed to have been the mammoth. The violence of the floods, too, frequently detach large pieces of land from the Sumatra shores, which, formed into islands, float to a great distance in the sea. II. The Canadians had formerly a custom of planting large trees on the ice. These remained the whole winter; and being evergreen, you frequently appear, says Aubery', to be travelling through an avenue of pines. These, on the melting of the snow, float down to the sea. From the western shores, also, of America pines float to the Pacific Islands. An instance of which is afforded by the circumstance of two large canoes having been made of pine at Mowee and Attowai. The pine, as a living tree, is unknown in those islands. Indeed the American rivers, both north and south, during the time of their respective inundations, carry an inconceivable quantity of logs, weeds, shrubs, and plants, down to the ocean. Large trees, too, of American growth are frequently picked up on the beach in the Azores. On the same coast, previous to the time of Columbus, a new continent and a new race of men were indicated by the appearance of a bamboo 2, and two dead bodies, having features and complexions widely differing from those of any men, at that time known. The rivers of Italy, in the same manner, discharge large quantities of chestnuts, acorns, and cypressnuts into the Adriatic; which are afterwards picked up Trav. i. p. 108. 2 Munorz. Hist. del Nuevo Mundo, l. ii. ss. 14. on the coasts of Greece and Africa; and not unfrequently on the shores of Spain. After violent storms ambergrease is picked up on the shores of Ireland; and cocoa-nuts on the beach of the North Seas. On the Shetland and Orkney Islands are occasionally thrown up fruits, belonging to the torrid hemisphere of America; on the shores of the Hebrides seeds from Jamaica; and on those of Ferro and Gomera, plants from St. Domingo. Seeds, cast on the coasts of Ireland and Norway1, will sometimes take root and flourish. This is one method, of which Nature avails herself, in propagating plants. But she has adopted other methods, not less effective, though more mysterious. III. Some plants float from one end of the globe to the other. The trumpet-grass, seen off the Cape, is torn, for the most part, from the South African shores; but others are wafted from the American continent. The pistia straliotes float on pools, ditches, and rivers in Java. Its roots take but little or no hold of the ground. The marine weeds, that compose the grassy sea in the Atlantic, have neither roots nor fibres. They vegetate, as they float along, bearing green and red berries, harbouring a multitude of insects. There is also a plant in Chili2, and a similar one in Japan, called the "flower of the air." This appellation is given to it, because it has no root, and is never fixed to the earth. It twines round a dry tree, or sterile rock. Each shoot produces two or three Linnæus.-Coloniæ Plant. p. 3. —Amænitat. Academ. 1. viii. in flowers like a lily; white, transparent, and odoriferous. It is capable of being transported two or three hundred miles; and it vegetates as it travels, suspended on a twig. Many plants have a double faculty of propagation. The testuca ovina has this property. When it grows a vale, or upon a plain, its seeds ripen, fall, and vegetate in the manner of other plants. But when it grows upon the tops of mountains, where it finds a difficulty in ripening its seeds, it becomes a viviparous plant. The germ shoots into blade in the cup; falls to the ground; takes root; and becomes the mother of others, having the same remarkable property. Some seeds are thrown by the force of the surf, which in some places rises even to the height of ten fathoms. Lifted so high in air, the winds separate them, as they descend, from the particles of water, with which they rose, and waft them to the internal parts of the island. Some plants in the Pacific islands were probably originally marine. Cast upon the shore, they have vegetated: these have produced seeds, which, being carried by winds or birds higher from the sea, have accommodated themselves to the soil, in which they were thus accidentally thrown; and during a series of propagations have gradually assumed characters not originally belonging to them. The nymphæa alba has, probably, been the patriarch of many plants, now differing in shape and habit from itself. This vegetable, like many other aquatic plants, at the time of flowering, rises to the surface of the water: in the morning it expands its blossoms, and towards evening closes them again. |