65 
If you wish to make sure that this is actually so, 
gather some of these nuts, and take them home with 
you. It will not be long before they begin to pop open, 
and shoot out their little seeds. 
Did you ever hear of Thoreau? He was a man who 
left his friends and family to live by himself in the 
woods he so dearly loved. Here he grew to know 
each bird and beast, each flower and tree; almost as 
if they were his brothers and sisters. One day 
he took home with him some of these nuts, and 
later he wrote about them in his journal, — 
“ Heard in the night a snap- os 
ping sound, and the fall of => qj , 
some small body on the floor Z 
from time to time. In the morning I found 4 Fic. 72 
it was produced by the witch-hazel nuts on 
my desk springing open and casting their seeds quite 
across my chamber.” 
Now, I do not want any of you children to go off 
by yourselves to live in the woods; but I should like 
to think that you could learn to love these woods and 
their inmates with something of the love that Thoreau 
felt. And if you watch their ways with half the care 
that he did, some such love is sure to come. 
Although the witch-hazel’s rough way of dealing 
with its young is not very common among the plants, 
we find much the same thing done by the wild gera- 
nium, or crane’s bill, and by the touch-me-not. 
The wild geranium is the pretty purplish, or at times 
pink flower which blossoms along the roads and in the 
woods in May and early June. 
DANA’S PLANTS. — 5 
