26o 



NATURE'S CALENDAR 



December lo 



lotus, holds its drupes all winter: it is in 

 order that the birds may come and sow 

 the seed. The berries are like small 

 gravel stones with a sugar coating, and a 

 bird will not eat them till he is pretty 

 hard pressed, but in late fall and winter 

 the robins, cedar-birds, and bluebirds de- 

 vour them readily, and, of course, lend 

 their wMngs to scatter the seed far and 

 wide. The same is true of the juniper 

 berries and the fruit of the bitter-sweet. 

 In certain other cases, where the fruit 

 tends to hang on during the winter, as 

 with the bladder nut and the honey lo- 

 cust [eaten by squirrels occasionally], it is 

 probably because the frost and the per- 

 petual moisture of the ground would rot 

 or kill the germ. To beech - nuts, chest- 

 nuts, and acorns the moisture of the 

 ground and the covering seems congenial, 

 though too much warmth or moisture of- 

 ten causes the acorns to germinate prem- 

 aturely. I have found the ground under 

 the oaks in December covered with nuts, 

 all anchored by purple sprouts. But 

 the winter which follows such untimely 

 growths generally proves fatal to them." 



A provision very similar to that of the 

 grouse is made for the feet of some small 

 mammals that stay abroad, such as our 

 northern rabbit, along the margins of 

 whose feet the hairs grow so long and 

 stilT that a Western relative is called the 

 snowslioe rabbit. 



It is a variety of the American northern 



December ii 



