HOW THE SEEDS CROSS THE SEA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 299, 13 September 1919, Page 7

HOW THE SEEDS CROSS THE SEA

"American plants, brought by no human agency, grow along the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland, from Donegal to Kerry. Hnw camo they there?" asks tiio "Children's Newspaper." '"fhev arrive in the form of seeds and fruits from a tropical climate. They coriio «a the winter fuel of the Orkney' Islanders' came'in'the days of the Spanish Armada—bv sen. . They are the seeds of fruits of.plants grown in the West. Indies.

"We h.vre long known of water-borne and seas'iorne seeds' voyages. but an expert has just been, presenting now facts on the subject lo the Royal Irish Academy. These growths from afar on triali soil have been common knowledge for two centuries, but now investigations provo that the seeds are all of a highly buoyant character; and capablo of floating in. water for a year, more than long enough for the Gulf Stream • to' bear them . from' the New World to the Old. "Not' all' seeds would stand, such n peat ordeal; multitudes are killed by salt water, but • the fact. ■ that island s&eds should be able to lire in the sea is what we should expect. Nature in euch .conditions has evolved 'seafarers among her botnnical children. Seeds ripen and go colonising, from island to island, from continent to continent, with the currents of ocean as their chariots."