HAZEL-TREE. 303 



The squirrel, 



" Who wants no other shade, 

 Than what by his own spreading tail is made, 

 Doth cull the soundest, dextrously picks out 

 The kernels sweet, and throws the shells ahout." 



This he effects by rasping off the small end, and then 

 splitting the shell in two with his long fore teeth, as 

 readily as a school-boy with his knife. The field-mouse 

 nibbles a hole, round as if drilled with a wimble, and yet 

 so small, that it seems strange how the kernel can be 

 extracted ; and the nut-hatch picks an irregular hole with 

 her bill. She has no hands wherewith to hold the nut 

 while thus employed, and therefore she fixes it, like an 

 adroit workman, in a vice of Nature's making some cleft 

 or chink in a tree ; and taking her stand a little above, she 

 either perforates the stubborn shell, or else, striking it with 

 all her strength, she breaks it asunder, and readily obtains 

 the kernel. 



Painters owe to my ripe brown nuts an expressed oil, 



