Hooker: "The distribution of fresh-water molluscs has been a horrid incubus to me, but I think I know my way now.
When first hatched they are very active, and I have had thirty or forty crawl on a dead duck's foot; and they cannot be jerked off, and will live fifteen or even twenty-four hours out of water" ("Life and Letters," II., page 93).

The published account of these experiments is in the "Origin," Edition I., page 385.) Some sink and some swim; and in both cases I have had (as yet) one come to life again, which has quite astonished and delighted me.

I feel as if a thousand-pound weight was taken off my back.

Adios, my dear, kind friend.
I must tell you another of my profound experiments! [Frank] said to me: "Why should not a bird be killed (by hawk, lightning, apoplexy, hail, etc.) with seed in its crop, and it would swim ?" No sooner said than done: a pigeon has floated for thirty days in salt water with seeds in its crop, and they have grown splendidly; and to my great surprise even tares (Leguminosae, so generally killed by sea-water), which the bird had naturally eaten, have grown well.

You will say gulls and dog-fish, etc., would eat up the carcase, and so they would 999 times out of a thousand, but one might escape: I have seen dead land-birds in sea-drift.
LETTER 338.