254: DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



haps, as hard to believe that it plants the acorn that a tree 

 may grow. Why it does it is a problem yet to be solved. 

 It may have no connection with the hoarding of many 

 nuts in the hollow of a tree, the purpose of which is un- 

 mistakable. Is it a survival of a habit established in an 

 earlier geological epoch ? 



Birds are said to eat them, but this is a rare occur- 



frence here, I am sure. The blue jay is said to hoard them 

 fc> r winter use.l?) I have never seen any evidence of this, 



; but have known these birds to feed upon beechnuts and 

 chincapins. These latter nuts, however, do not appear 

 ever to be stored away, in this neighborhood, by the jays. 

 Life higher in the scale than the larvae of insects, it 

 would seem, practically ignores the acorn. It appears, 

 therefore, to be a fruit born under a lucky star, but is it ? 

 Plant one and be you ever so careful the chances are 

 slim that you will possess an oak. As a twig with two 

 leaves it is full of promise ; but there, alas ! the matter 

 ends. The upstart weeds of April crowd them to the 

 wall. An infant oak shrinks to fatal obscurity beneath 

 the shadow of a bramble. But should Fortune smile upon 

 the timid growth and saplinghood be reached, then prac- 

 tically all danger is passed, and a perfect oak is promised 

 to the succeeding century. Until at least one hundred 

 years old the tree is incomplete, however symmetrical its 

 branches or stately its general mien. The solid, gnarly 

 limb ; the wide-spreading crown, in outline almost a globe ; 

 the deeply wrinkled bark ; the twisted roots above the sod 

 and mossy nooks between them; these are not features 

 of a growing tree, but of the completed growth. 



It is an ideal forest where these trees are grouped, and 

 pleasure enough for a day's ramble to meet with even one 

 such tree. Oak forests are features of the past, and when 

 we come to deal with dry statistics the number of really 

 fine old oaks scattered over the country is painfully small. 



