128 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



rificing the many for the good of the few. Squir- 

 rels and small burrowing animals bury thousands 

 of nuts each year in order to soften their hard 

 shells. When this is accomplished many of them 

 are eaten, a few are forgotten and so, being already 

 planted, grow into trees. Large numbers of wal- 

 nuts, pecans, chinquapins, acorns, and hickory nuts 

 are distributed this way. Strange as it may seem, 

 whole persimmon groves are sometimes started 

 near a hollow tree where an ambitious opossum has 

 reared a family and scattered the seeds around his 

 home. A hollow at the foot of an old oak, the home 

 of many squirrels, often sends up a small forest 

 of oak shoots from buried nuts. 



However, it must be admitted that animal-riding 

 is only a secondary or last resort locomotion of nuts. 

 Their plan seems to be: avoid detection if you can 

 by colouring yourself green while on the tree and 

 brown while on the ground. Protect yourself with 

 burs and bitter rinds. When you fall, endeavour 

 to roll down hill or float on the water. If you are 

 carried away by an animal, you travel much farther 

 and are planted gratis, but you run the chance of 

 later being dug up and eaten. 



The unicorn nut is one of the few enthusiastic 

 animal riders. It has a special apparatus for at- 

 taching itself to the feet of animals. Most Amer- 



