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Extraordinary Flight of Leaves

Abstract

MR. SHAW'S letter (NATURE, vol. xlii. p. 637) is a curiously corroborative fact in support of Mr. Wallace's theory of the wind being an agent for the dispersion of seeds, which he so strongly urges in his book, “Darwinism,” to account for the universal distribution of many plants. For if, as the letter intimates, such weighty objects as oak-leaves can be conveyed through the air in such vast numbers as to cover an area two miles long by one in width, then it would not require a wide stretch of imagination to conceive that miniature objects like seeds, delicately winged for flight by Nature as so many are, might travel by thousands for hundreds of miles in favourable winds.

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THOMAS, R. Extraordinary Flight of Leaves. Nature 43, 9 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/043009b0

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