Falling
A free-falling object without any adaptation to flight can only be sustained by the wind if it is very light and falls more slowly than the wind blows it upwards.
Many mould and bacterial spores, even live bacteria, are small enough to be carried long distances and to great heights on the wind.
Some plants also use the wind for seed dispersal in this way. Orchid seeds are very small and dust-like.
Read more about this topic: Unpowered Flight
Famous quotes containing the word falling:
“Gaze not on swans, in whose soft breast,
A full-hatched beauty seems to nest
Nor snow, which falling from the sky
Hovers in its virginity.”
—Henry Noel, British poet, and William Strode, British poet. Beauty Extolled (attributed to Noel and to Strode)
“In my grandmother’s house there was always chicken soup
And talk of the old country—mud and boards,
Poverty,
The snow falling down and necks of lovers.”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)