n I had anticipated.

Very many thanks for your invitation. I had made up my mind, on my poor
wife's account, not to come up to next Phil. Club; but I am so much
tempted by your invitation, and my poor dear wife is so good-natured
about it, that I think I shall not resist--i.e., if she does not get
worse. I would come to dinner at about same time as before, if that
would suit you, and I do not hear to the contrary; and would go away by
the early train--i.e., about 9 o'clock. I find my present work tries me
a good deal, and sets my heart palpitating, so I must be careful. But
I should so much like to see Henslow, and likewise meet Lindley if
the fates will permit. You will see whether there will be time for any
criticism in detail on my MS. before dinner: not that I am in the
least hurry, for it will be months before I come again to Geographical
Distribution; only I am afraid of your forgetting any remarks.

I do not know whether my very trifling observations on means of
distribution are worth your reading, but it amuses me to tell them.

The seeds which the eagle had in [its] stomach for eighteen hours looked
so fresh that I would have bet five to one that they would all have
grown; but some kinds were ALL killed, and two oats, one canary-seed,
one clover, and one beet alone came up! Now I should have not cared
swearing that the beet would not have been killed, and I should have
fully expected that the clover would have been. These seeds, however,
were kept for three days in moist pellets, damp with gastric juice,
after being ejected, which would have helped to have injured them.

Lately I have been looking, during a few walks, at excrement of small
birds. I have found six kinds of seeds, which is more than I expected.
Lastly, I have had a partridge with twenty-two grains of dry earth on
one foot, and to my surprise a pebble as big as a tare seed; and I now
understand how this is possible, for the bird scratches itself, [and
the] little plumous feathers make a sort of very tenacious plaister.
Think of the millions of migratory quails (332/2. See "Origin," Edition
I., page 363, where the millions of migrating quails occur again.), and
it would be strange if some plants have not been transported across good
arms of the sea.

Talking of this, I have just read your curious Raoul Island paper.
(332/3. "Linn. Soc. Journal." I., 1857.) This looks more like a case of
continuous land, or perhaps of several intervening, now l