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Show 1~0 DISTRIBUTION OF MAN. [Ch. VII. best diver, frequently went down to the bottom 0~ the sea, where it is well known that the water is not so salt, With a cocoa nut shell, with only a small opening." When these unfortunate men reached the isles of Radack, every hope and almost every feeling had died within them; their sail had. long been destroyed, their canoe had long been the s~ort of wmds a~d waves, and they were picked up by the inhabitants of Aur, 1~ a state of insensibility*; but by the hospitable care of those Islanders they soon recovered, and were restored to perfect he~lth. . Captain Beechey, in his late voyage to the Pa~Ific, ~el~ m with some natives of the Coral Islands, who had m a Similar manner been carried to a great distance from their native country. They had embarked to the number of one . hundr~d and fifty souls, in three double canoes, f<rom Anaa, or Cham Island, situate about three hundred miles to the eas~ward.of Otaheite. They were overtaken by the monsoon, whiCh dispersed the canoes, and after driving them about th~ ocean, left them becalmed, so that a great number of persons penshed. Two of the canoes were never heard of, but the other was drifted from one uninhabited island to another, at each of which the voyagers obtained a few provisions : and at .leng.th, after having wandered for a distance of SIX hundred miles, they were found and carried to their home in the Blossom t · The space traversed in some of these instances was so great, that similar .accidents might suffice to transport canoes from various parts of Africa to the shores of South America, or from Spain to the Azores, and thence to North America. So that man even in a rude state of society, is liable to be scattered ' . involuntarily by the winds and waves over the globe, m a manner singularly analogous to that in which many plants and animals are diffused. We ought not then to wonder that during the ages required for some tribes of the human race to attain that advanced stage of civilization which empowers the "' Kotzebue's Voyage, 1815-1818. Quartrrly Review, vol. xxvi. P· 361. t Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific, &c., in the years 1825, 1826,1827, 1828, p. 170. Ch. VII.] DISPERSION OF ANIMALS BY MAN. 1~1 navigator to cross the ocean in all directions with security, the whole earth should have become the abode of rude tribes of hunters and fishers. Were the whole of mankind now cut off, with the exception of one family, inhabiting the old or new continent, or Australia, or even some coral islet of the Pacific, we should expect theit· descendants, though they should never become more enlightened than the South Sea Islanders or the Esquimal;lx, to spread in the course of ages over the whole earth, diffused partly by the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence, in a limited district, and partly by the accidental drifting of canoes by tides and currents to distant shores. Involuntary influence of Man in diffusing Animals and Plants. Many of the general remarks which we made -respecting the influence of man in spreading or in checking the diffusion of plants, apply equally to his relations with the animal kingdom. We shall be led on a future occasion to speak of the instrumentality of our species in naturalizing useful animals and plants in new regions, when we explain our views of the effects which the spreading and increase of certain species exert in the extirpation of others. At present we shall confine ourselves to a few remarks on the involuntary aid which man lends to the dissemination of species. In the mammiferous class our influence is chiefly displayed in increasing the number of quadrupeds which are serviceable to us, and in exterminating or reducing the number of those which are noxious. Sometimes, however, we unintentionally pmmote the multiplication of inimical species, as when we introduced the rat, which was not indigenous in the New World, into all parts of :America. They have been conveyed over in ships, and now mfest a great multitude of islands and parts of that continent. In like. manner the Norway rat has been imported into England, where 1t plunders our property in ships and houses. |