76 PRACTICAL FORESTRY 
About twenty of these nuts are formed together in- 
side an extremely hard round shell. It resembles a 
small cannon-ball. This fruit falls with such foree 
from the high trees that the natives protect their 
heads and shoulders with bucklers of wood. If the 
ground is soft, it buries itself in the soil when it 
falls. It is so full of oil, however, that it floats, and 
is probably carried from place to place in times of 
flood. 
Some fruits are so constructed that they explode 
and shoot their seeds some distance, as with the sand- 
box-tree of the tropics. It is often called the mon- 
key’s dinner-bell; because, on hearing the explosion, 
the monkeys hasten to feast upon the seeds. The 
wich-hazel pod squeezes out its seeds just as a boy 
shoots a bean or apple-seed from between his thumb 
and forefinger. Twigs of willows are snapped off by 
the currents of streams and are washed ashore, where 
they take root and grow. 
We could mention many interesting devices for 
the spread of plants over the face of the earth. The 
most potent disseminator of all, however, is man, 
who uses intelligence in his work of distribution. 
In many places he has completely changed the na- 
ture of the landscape by tree-planting, as in our 
Western country. Even more potent in this work 
than the individual, is the government, which, in hav- 
