262 Seed-Carriers 



Rooks seem to be especially busy in this way, at all 

 events in America, where they are said to be per- 

 petually carrying things about in their claws, with 

 which they are able to grasp even hens' eggs. 



On one occasion a large number of fowls, destined 

 for New Orleans, had been collected at some spot up 

 the river, and as the boat which was to convey them 

 was not ready, they were turned out into the woods 

 for about a week to shift for themselves. During this 

 time they laid about two thousand eggs daily, a fact 

 which seemed immensely to interest the rooks of the 

 neighbourhood. For, whether with a view to eating 

 them, or simply from a love of being busy, they devoted 

 themselves to carrying the eggs away, and burying 

 them in a field more than half a mile off on the other 

 side of a creek. A month or two later, when the field 

 was ploughed, the eggs were turned up in hundreds, 

 and being still perfectly good, supplied the labourers 

 with many a meal. 



But now, supposing that the rooks had buried acorns 

 instead of eggs, and that the field had been waste 

 ground, where plough and harrow never came, might 

 not a small forest of oaks have sprung up ? and may 

 not many a plantation of oaks, beeches, sycamores and 

 other trees, have been planted in a similar way ? 



A certain pine-forest in Minnesota, for example, on 

 being cut down, was at once succeeded by oaks ; and 

 a similar thing is said to have occurred in North 

 Carolina, with nothing in either case to account for it. 

 The oaks seemed to have grown of themselves ; but 

 since oaks must certainly spring from acorns, it seems 

 at least possible, and indeed probable, that rooks may 

 have been the planters. 



