THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 43 



and brambles which frequently choke and injure oaks ; 

 and that no mending over is necessary, as scarcely an 

 oak so planted is found to fail.&quot; 



Thus much the English planters have discovered 

 by patient experiment, and, for aught I know, they 

 have taken out a patent for it ; but they appear not 

 to have discovered that it was discovered before, and 

 that they are merely adopting the method of Nature, 

 which she long ago made patent to all. She is all 

 the while planting the oaks amid the pines without 

 our knowledge, and at last, instead of government 

 officers, we send a party of wood-choppers to cut down 

 the pines, and so rescue an oak forest, at which we 

 wonder as if it had dropped from the skies. 



As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I hear 

 the sound of green pig-nuts falling from time to time, 

 cut off by the chickaree over my head. In the fall, 

 I notice on the ground, either within or in the neigh 

 borhood of oak woods, on all sides of the town, stout 

 oak twigs three or four inches long, bearing half-a- 

 dozen empty acorn-cups, which twigs have been gnawed 

 off by squirrels, on both sides of the nuts, in order to 

 make them more portable. The jays scream and the 

 red squirrels scold while you are clubbing and shak 

 ing the chestnut-trees, for they are there on the same 

 errand, and two of a trade never agree. I frequently 

 see a red or gray squirrel cast down a green chestnut 

 bur, as I am going through the woods, and I used to 

 think, sometimes, that they were cast at me. In fact, 

 they are so busy about it, in the midst of the chest 

 nut season, that you cannot stand long in the woods 

 without hearing one fall. A sportsman told me that 

 he had, the day before, that was in the middle of 

 October, seen a green chestnut bur dropt on our 



