ACORNS 235 



Some of the trees seem to produce fruit of extra 

 sweetness or extra fine flavour at least, the game- 

 keeper finds that his pheasants seem to prefer to feed 

 beneath certain trees. Perhaps it is that those trees 

 which are most sun-drenched produce the sweetest 

 acorns, just as the most exposed hazel-nuts on the 

 topmost twigs are so much better than the pale ones 

 of the lowest branches. 



The keeper welcomes a generous supply of acorns 

 provided that the trees which yield them grow in his 

 woods, and not exclusively near the boundary of his 

 beat. Wood-pigeons, as soon as they have cleared 

 the beech -mast, their specially favoured food, will stuff 

 their crops with acorns to the bursting-point and 

 so grow fat. Acorns also form an important item 

 in the winter fare of rabbits and deer. It is true that 

 they draw rats to the coverts, and even when the last 

 acorn has gone it is not easy to clear the rats away 

 completely. Whether or not there are plentiful 

 acorns, the keeper is much indebted to the oak for 

 food for pheasants, because they are so fond of the 

 spangle-galls, to be found in plenty on the backs of the 

 leaves, that they prefer them even to the maize which 

 is freely scattered. All the galls of the oak, whether 

 oak-apples, or bullet, artichoke, spangle, or root galls, 

 are the outcome of eggs laid by the various gall- wasps, 

 and the pheasants know that within the spangle-galls 

 are the grubs, feeding on the galls' flesh. Left to 

 themselves, the grubs will in due time reach the 

 chrysalis stage of existence, to be hatched in June as 



