30 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



manages to get at the sap-growth before it is visible 

 to the casual eye. This morning he was nibbling the 

 horribly bitter and resinous top shoots of a Welling- 

 tonia, thereby incurring the wrath of a certain sylvi- 

 culturist. A meal in which we should be slightly 

 more likely to join him is the one he took a day or 

 two ago from the sycamore. With his ivory chisels 

 he stripped off the bark in straw-like shavings, and 

 licked up the soft cambium, sweet with maple sugar. 

 And so that nothing should be wasted, he gave the 

 vegetable wool he had made from the bark to his 

 mate, who lined the nest with it. By such means he 

 scrapes along till the first glad day when he finds that 

 the wood-pigeon has laid fresh eggs for him. Of eggs 

 he eats a good many. And if they should sometimes 

 be hard-set, what of that ? And if he should come 

 too late to find them eggs at all, he distresses us by 

 sitting up with a young bird in his hands and eating 

 it as he does a sweet chestnut. 



Let us leave a horrible subject and discuss those 

 hands. The animal that takes reasonably to arboreal 

 life is well in the way of intellectual advancement. 

 Apart from the fact that Athene" rules the air, and 

 may therefore usually be found on the tree-tops, any 

 stimulus that makes an animal begin to use its hands 

 is good. He must not specialise too much, like the 

 sloth which cannot get down from the tree he lives in, 

 and is the emblem of stupidity. But if he practises 

 such all-round excellence as the squirrel is master of, 

 swarming up trunks, balancing on boughs, grasping 

 twigs, leaping from tree to tree, and never forgetting 

 to keep up his running powers upon land, his foot 

 is on the ladder that may lead to a university career. 



