In the Bahamas the natives speak of “hurricane grass” as a plant that was unknown on Great Bahama Island before August 13, 1890, when there was a great hurricane. Soon after this the sedge, which had been blown over from another island, began to be common on Great Bahama, where it is now thoroughly established. On Krakatoa near Java a violent eruption in 1883 completely destroyed the vegetation, covering the island with volcanic material. In thirteen years over sixty species of plants had arrived on the island, of which about twenty had been blown there as seeds or spores. Birds had carried about 7 per cent and the remainder had come by other means. No plants with sticky burs or other devices for catching in the coats of animals were found. It is among the _Compositæ_ or daisy family that the wind is seen to work most effectively as distributing agents of its light-plumed fruits. In the Falkland Islands, St. Helena, and Prince’s Island, all from 300 to 1,500 miles from the nearest land, species of _Senecio_ or groundsel have been found that may well have been wind-driven onto these remote islands from the mainland. In fact the whole genus _Senecio_, consisting of over two thousand species, and of world-wide distribution, has in all probability been spread largely by its wind-borne achenes. They are not edible, nor are they suited to carriage by the ocean currents, but some of them are known to stick in the plumage of birds. But it is hardly necessary to cite these far-flung examples of the wind’s action in distributing seeds, for there are many interesting cases much closer home. The tumbleweeds, such as the false indigo and certain grasses, are familiar sights scudding before the wind over prairies in the West and open places in the East. By a kind of foresight the winged seeds of the pines are so weighted, due to lack of symmetry, that instead of sailing quickly to the ground, they tumble and flutter about, thus prolonging the time of flight. And in the linden the curious winglike attachment from which the stalk of the fruit arises is admirably fitted to slide over the snow and ice upon which, through their often tardy falling, they are deposited. Scores of such adaptations of structure to function are known, where there seems direct response to conditions and there is the temptation to say that such adaptations are caused by the wind or other agency. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as plants do not produce winged seeds or luscious fruits to insure seed dispersal, but the seeds of plants having such devices, from whatever cause, are naturally favored in the ceaseless struggle to occupy new land, which is quite another thing. WATER