84 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



as a perch for one after another of these songsters ; every rock and crag make fa- 

 vorite places about which numerous seeds are sown. 



Then squirrels come with their stores of nuts for winter use, selecting choice 

 spots for store houses, which become well filled as these graceful creatures ply 

 often from yonder nut trees to their hiding places. 



The wind blows briskly, and thickly fly the downy thistle, the cottony seeds 

 of the willow and populus families ; whirling with rapidity come the heavier 

 winged seeds of liriodendron, ashes and maples, which, alighting here and there-, 

 bury their heads 'neath the soft mud of the water-soaked soil ; further on the 

 lighter seeds of elm are wafted, strewing the ground as with snow. 



Seeds of herbaceous plants are scattered hither and thither as the winds and 

 birds gather them up from the verdant spots, to be strewn where there are none. 

 Gently the falling leaves from the adjoining forests spread a light cover, hiding the 

 scattered seeds and affording protection from the elements. Soon the snowflakes 

 fly thick and fast ; a mantle covers the land. As the surface is melted by the sun 

 and frozen when night comes on, the snow crust forms an ideal playground for the 

 wind, which, shattering the seeds from cones of hemlock, pine and spruce, drives 

 them fiercely over the snow until they are caught by some obstacle. 



Spring comes, with rains ; the rushing waters overflow their banks, picking up 

 the twigs with clinging seeds, bear them further down the stream, and spreading 

 over the treeless wastes, deposit them to sink into the yielding soil. With the 

 warm, life-giving sunshine of spring the seeds thrust downward their rootlets 

 while upward reaches a bud, when two tiny leaves appear as harbingers of spring. 



And thus a forest is born. Not in a day, nor a year, for nature takes her own 

 time and methods to accomplish her objects, yet in due time a natural forest covers 

 the spot which accident or design had made barren. Here are beech, ash and 

 maple, there a clump of elms, a walnut and hickory alternating with blackberry 

 briars and elder, hemlock with pine ; trees of mammoth proportions and shrubs of 

 low degree; ginseng, violet and twining grape strive for space to spread their 

 roots and display their peculiar attractions. 



Yonder chestnut will afford abundant nuts for boys and squirrels ; these 

 hackberries, cherries, grapes and elderberries will feed the birds which planted 

 them ; that oak may become a gnarled monarch among whose branches birds will 

 twitter their songs of love, build their nests in safety and feed upon its countless 

 acorns, which, as if to acknowledge its dependence upon the birds and small ani- 

 mals, it supplies in such abundance 



Certain birds plant nuts and acorns with systematic regularity, burying them 

 'neath the surface, one in a place, expecting ere long to find its food, either from 

 an enclosed egg which will in time become a fat. luscious worm, or else the meat 

 of the acorn. 



In Arizona the blue jays gather the pine nuts and bury them singly to a 

 depth of an inch or more, in the arid sands. Here they are preserved for months, 

 or until the snow has fallen and melted, moistening the seeds. In this manner 

 the pinion is planted. 



The wild cherry, but for its tasty, juicy berries, as also the hackberry. would 

 soon become extinct or at least confined in narrow limits but for the birds. These 

 seeds have no wings to be borne by the winds ; they do not readily float upon the 



