Transport by air is no less important than transport by water in this matter of passive migration. The dust covering our streets and roofs, the earth lying on dry fields and dried-up pools, the light moist soil of forests, in short, the whole surface of the globe contains millions of small organisms and their germs. Many of these small animals and plants can without injury become completely dried up, and awake again to life as soon as they are moistened. Every gust of wind raises up with the dust innumerable little creatures of this kind, and often carries them away to other places miles off. But even larger organisms, and especially their germs, may often make distant passive journeys through the air. The seeds of many plants are provided with light feathery processes, which act as parachutes and facilitate their flight in the air, and prevent their falling. Spiders make journeys of many miles through the air on their fine filaments, their so-called gossamer threads. Young frogs are frequently raised by whirlwinds into the air by thousands, and fall down in a distant part as a “shower of frogs.” Storms may carry birds and insects across half the earth’s circumference. They drop in the United States, having risen in England. Starting from California, they only come to rest in China. But, again, many other organisms may make the journey from one continent to another together with the birds and insects. Of course all parasites, the number of which is legion, fleas, lice, mites, moulds, etc., migrate with the organisms upon which they live. In the earth which often remains sticking to the claws of birds there are also small animals and plants or their germs. Thus the voluntary or involuntary migration of a single larger organism may carry a whole small flora and fauna from one part of the earth to another. Besides the means of transport here mentioned, there are many others which explain the distribution of animal and vegetable species over the large tracts of the earth’s surface, and especially the general distribution of the so-called cosmopolitan species. But these alone would not nearly be sufficient to explain all chorological facts. How is it, for example, that many inhabitants of fresh water live in various rivers or lakes far away and quite apart from one another? How is it that many inhabitants of mountains, which cannot exist in plains, are found upon entirely separated and far distant chains of mountains? It is difficult to believe, and in many cases quite inconceivable, that these inhabitants of fresh water should have in any way, actively or passively, migrated over the land lying between the lakes, or that the inhabitants of mountains in any way, actively or passively, crossed the plains lying between their mountain homes. But here geology comes to our help, as a mighty ally, and completely solves these difficult problems for us.