144 WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND BLOSSOMS. 



enlarged ovary, two cells of which have aborted. Flowers 

 April and May. 



The Oak forms the world of a great number of insects, many 

 of which are either parasites (gall-flies which produce Oak- 

 apples, bullet-galls, spangles, and other forms of gall) or their 

 lodgers. Several fungi, too, specially select old Oaks upon 

 which to live freely. Chief among these is the remarkable 

 Beef-steak fungus (Fistulina hepaticd), of which in October 

 a hundred-weight might be quickly gathered in an oakwood. 



Hazel (Corylus avellana). 



The Hazel is one of the most look-ahead kind of trees, for 

 almost before this year's nuts have all dropped off, or been 

 picked off, she puts out the tiny, cylindric grey bodies that 

 continue to lengthen all the winter and by February have 

 become loose and open. Then it can be seen that these 

 catkins consist of male flowers, for the yellow stamens are 

 evident, and soon every breeze shakes out a little cloud of 

 yellow pollen. Looked at analytically, the catkin is seen to be 

 made up of a large number of scaly bracts, of which one large 

 and two small go to a flower, and these are so arranged as to 

 form a pent-house roof over the eight stamens. The female 

 flowers are altogether different. They each consist of a two- 

 celled ovary, with two slender, crimson styles, and enclosed in 

 a kind of calyx, three-parted. Two of these flowers are then 

 associated in a bud-like involucre, situated at the end of a twig. 

 In spring, before the leaves appear, these open and the crimson 

 stigmas are put forth to catch a little of the flying pollen. By 

 September one cell of the ovary has developed into a hard 

 shell containing one large seed (kernel) and clasped by a large 

 raggedly-cut hood the developed involucre. 



When the tips of the nutshells become brown-tinged, then 

 appear boys, squirrels, dormice and nuthatches, and by their 



