SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES. 15 



recover it before it finally retreated. Digging tliere, I found 

 two green pig nuts joined together, with the thick husks on, 

 buried about an inch and a half under the reddish soil of de- 

 cayed hemlock leaves — just the right depth to plant it. In 

 short, tliis squirrel was then engaged in accomplishing two 

 objects, to wit, laying up a store of winter food for itself, and 

 planting a hickory wood for all creation. If the squirrel was 

 killed, or neglected its deposit, a hickory would spring up. 

 The nearest liickory tree was twenty rods distant. These nuts 

 were there still just fourteen days later, but were gone when I 

 looked again, November 21, or six weeks later still. 



I have since examined more carefully several dense woods, 

 which are said to be, and are apparently exclusively pine, and 

 always with the same i-esult. For instance, I walked the same 

 day to a small, but very dense and handsome white-pine grove, 

 about fifteen rods square, in the east part of this town. The 

 trees are large for Concord, being from ten to twenty inches in 

 diameter, and as exclusively pine as any wood that I know. 

 Indeed, I selected this wood because I thought it the least likely 

 to contain any thing else. It stands on an open plain or pasture. 

 excei)t that it adjoins another small pine wood, which has a few 

 little oaks in it, on the south-east side. On every other side, it 

 was at least thirty rods from the nearest woods. Standing on 

 the edge of this grove and looking through it, for it is quite 

 level and free from underwood, for the most part bare, red- 

 carpeted ground, you would have said that there was not a hard 

 wood tree in it, young or old. But on looking carefully along 

 over its floor I discovered, though it was not till my eye had got 

 used to the search, that, alternating with thin ferns, and small 

 blueberry bushes, there was, not merely here and there, but as 

 often as every five feet, and with a degree of regularity, a little 

 oak, from three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found 

 a green acorn dropped by the base of a pine. 



I confess I was surprised to find ray theory so perfectly proved 

 in this case. One of the principal agents in this planting, the 

 red squirrels, were all the while curiously inspecting me, while 

 I was inspecting their plantation. Some of the little oaks had 

 been browsed by cows, which resorted to this wood for shade. 



After seven or eight years, the hard woods, evidently find 

 such a locality unfavorable to their growth, the pines being 



