44 TREES 



and the difficulty of opening their thin but leathery shells. 

 All along the centuries European peoples have counted on 

 this nut, and oil expressed from it, for their own food and 

 the dried leaves for forage for their cattle in winter. 



The American pioneer turned his hogs into the beech 

 woods to fatten on the beech-mast, and Thanksgiving 

 turkeys were always finer if they competed with the wild 

 turkey on the same fare. 



Birds and lesser mammals do much to plant trees when 

 they carry away, for immediate or future use, seeds that 

 are not winged for flight. Beechnuts are light enough to 

 profit, to some extent, by a high wind. And beech trees in 

 their infancy do well under the shade of other trees. So 

 each fruiting tree is the mother of many young ones. But 

 the seedling trees are not so numerous and important as 

 the sapling growth that rises from the roots of parent 

 trees. By these alone, a few isolated beeches will manage 

 to take possession of the ground around them and to 

 clothe it with so dense a foliage screen that all young 

 growth, except certain ferns and grasses, dies for lack of 

 sun. Before we can realize what is going on, the tract is a 

 pure forest of beech, rapidly enlarging on all sides by the 

 same campaign of extension. 



THE CHESTNUTS 



Chestnut and Chinquapin 



Casianea dentata, Borh., and C. pumila. Mill. 



Our native chestnut and its little brother, the chin- 

 quapin, are the American cousins of the sweet chestnut of 



