LOVERS OF NUTS 203 



beetle. When in early summer the hazel-nut is still 

 green, this beetle pierces the shell with its proboscis, 

 making a needle-like hole in which an egg is laid. 

 When the egg develops in due time into a maggot, 

 this little lump of flesh proceeds to devour the kernel 

 of the nut. Presently, in autumn, when he has eaten 

 perhaps only half the kernel, the nut falls to the ground. 

 Then the maggot begins to gnaw the shell. He makes 

 a clean, perfectly round, very small hole, and creeps 

 out, to bury himself in the earth, where he remains 

 through the winter, undergoing the transformation 

 by which he becomes, in the following summer, a 

 perfect black beetle himself. 



When in the summer you see tits attacking green 

 hazel-nuts, you may know that they are after the 

 weevils destroying the nuts. The great tit also is fond 

 of hazel-nuts when they are ripe. 



The Gat that Brought up Squirrels 



" A boy has taken three little young squirrels in their nest, or drey, 

 as it is called in these parts. These small creatures he put under the 

 care of a cat who had lately lost her kittens, and finds that she 

 nurses and suckles them with the same assiduity and affection as if 

 they were her own offspring. 



So many people went to see the little squirrels suckled by a cat 

 that the foster-mother became jealous of her charge, and in pain for 

 their safety, and therefore hid them over the ceiling, where one died. 

 This circumstance shows her affection for these foundlings, and 

 that she supposed the squirrels to be her own young. Thus hens, 

 when they have hatched ducklings, are equally attached to them as 

 if they were their own chickens." 



