32 THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE 



Have you ever noticed how many cherry stones a 

 bu*d will drop around upon the ground? You often 

 find cherry stones in the woods or open fields far 

 away from any cherry tree. Birds scatter blue- 

 berries and blackberries and strawberries about, and 

 the crows scatter corn. 



Squirrels are very fond of pears. They run up our 

 pear trees and sit up in the branches eating our finest 

 fruit, throwing down upon us, as if to mock us, only 

 the cores. They are especially fond of nuts, which 

 are the seeds of the trees that bear them, and these 

 they collect most busily in the autumn and store 

 away for the winter, some of them in little under- 

 ground storerooms. Often the squirrels gather more 

 nuts than they eat and those that are left in these 

 storerooms sprout and grow into oak trees, chestnut 

 trees, butternut and walnut trees. 



Every one of you must have seen a scarecrow and 

 you all know why the farmers put them in their corn- 

 fields. The crows eat the corn that is just planted, 

 and that is a great trouble to the farmers. But, long, 

 long ago, before the farmers planted corn, the crows 

 used to eat it and carry the seeds away. They planted 

 corn in their way then, as the farmers do in their way 

 now. Perhaps if the crows had not carried away the 

 corn and dropped it in different places in those long- 

 ago days, we ourselves should have no nice corn to eat. 



We do not like to have the crows eat our corn, or 

 the birds take our cherries or strawberries or black- 

 berries, or the squirrels hide away all our butternuts 

 or chestnuts. But we must remember that they were 

 at work helping these plants to distribute their seeds 



