14 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



incline to resort with their forage to the closest covert. They 

 also carry it into birch and other woods. This planting is car- 

 ried on annually, and the oldest seedlings annually die ; but 

 when the pines are cleared off, the oaks, having got just the 

 start they want, and now secured favorable conditions, imme- 

 diately spring up to trees. 



The shade of a dense pine wood is more unfavorable to 'the 

 springing up of pines of the same species than of oaks within 

 it, though the former may come up abundantly when the pines 

 are cut, if there chance to be sound seed in the ground. 



But when you cut off a lot of hard wood, very often the little 

 pines mixed with it have a similar start, for the squirrels have 

 carried off the nuts to the pines, and not to the more oj)en wood, 

 and they commonly make pretty clean work of it ; and more- 

 over, if the wood was old, the sprouts will be feeble or entirely 

 fail ; to say nothing about the soil being, in a measure, ex- 

 hausted for this kind of crop. 



If a j)inc wood is surrounded by a white oak one chiefly, 

 white oaks may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut. 

 If it is surrounded instead by an edging of shrub-oaks, then you 

 will probably have a dense shrub-oak thicket. 



I have no time to go into details, but will say, in a word, that 

 while the wind is conveying the seeds of pines into hard woods 

 and open lands, the squirrels and other animals are conveying 

 the seeds of oaks and walnuts into the pine woods, and thus 

 a rotation of crops is kept up. 



I affirmed this confidently many years ago, and an occasional 

 examination of dense pine woods confirmed me in my oj)inion. 

 It has long been known to observers that squirrels bury nuts in 

 the ground, but I am not aware that any one has thus accounted 

 for the regular succession of forests. 



On the 24th of September, in 1857, as I was paddling down 

 the Assabet, in this town, I saw a red squirrel run along the 

 bank under some herbage, with something large in its mouth. 

 It stopped near the foot of a hemlock, within a couple of rods 

 of me, and, hastily pawing a hole with its fore feet, dropped 

 its booty into it, covered it up, and retreated part way up the 

 trunk of the tree. As I approached the shore to examine the 

 deposit, the squirrel, descending i)art way, betrayed no little 

 anxiety about its treasure, and made two or three motions to 



