Birds as Propagators of Fruit Trees. 



67 



who want to set up as originals, and of 

 course the charge against him was that he 

 had made such a guy of himself as no crow 

 ever did before. Cute as they were, they 

 hadn't the least idea of how he had done it, 

 and of course the most aggravating feature 

 was that he wouldn't open his mouth and 

 explain. 



You may perhaps think it strange that he 

 didn't tell the simple truth and save himself 

 from the suspicion of vanity, but the poor 

 bird was willing to stand anything rather 

 than admit how he had been taken in. He 

 would never have heard the last of it, but 

 all his life would have been a butt for the 

 ridicule of the flock, so he just kept his 

 mouth closed. 



At last the crows could stand it no longer, 

 they were beside themselves with rage. At 

 a given signal they darted at the offender 

 in a body. They rose a few feet above the 

 tree, for a moment all appeared struggling 

 together, the collar fluttered to the ground, 



and more astonished than ever they all be- 

 gan to look for the culprit, but there he was 

 looking just like the rest of them, and as 

 black. How he managed to explain matters 

 I could not of course understand. Very 

 likely he invented some plausible fib, said 

 the paper stuck to him or something of that 

 sort. I don't know, but the persecution 

 ceased, and the crows flew off to another 

 tree to caw the matter over. 



I don't believe he ever told the true story, 

 at least not for many a long day after the 

 event. Very likely in after years when he 

 saw his grandchildren around him, and be- 

 came talkative, and fond of telling the ad- 

 ventures of his youth, as old crows will, 

 the sight of some thoughtless but favored 

 grandchild in the perilous position which 

 so nearly proved fatal for him, may have 

 loosed his tongue, and led to a confession. 

 The story must have leaked out somehow, 

 for you never catch an Indian crow that 

 way nowadays. 



BIRDS AS PROPAGATORS OF FRUIT TREES, 



VERY few gardeners in our northern 

 climate, who have been to the trouble 

 of making a garden, and know how much 

 labor it entails, will think of leaving such 

 work entirely to birds, but the planters of 

 Jamaica long ago found out that the birds 

 can make much better pimento or all spice 

 groves, than can be made by man. As a 

 consequence the work of planting, or more 

 properly of sowing, is left entirely to the 

 birds, man's share of the labor being con- 

 fined simply to chopping over the piece of 

 woodland, which it is proposed to convert 

 into a spice grove. 



After the first rains following the clear- 

 ing, a number of young pimento plants make 

 their appearance. The birds flitting about 

 among the fallen timber all through the 

 fruit season, drop the seeds everywhere, un- 

 der conditions which insure their immediate 



fertilization, and the partial shade afforded 

 by the fallen timber is just what is required 

 to foster the young plants' growth. By the 

 time the timber is rotten, the planter has 

 his pimento grove well developed, and re- 

 quiring only to be thinned out to render it 

 a source of profit for many years. 



There is nothing exceptional in this. Our 

 northern fruit-eating birds are doing the 

 same thing all the time. Let the settler 

 cut down the forests where he will, and if 

 there are many wild fruits within a radius 

 of many miles, the new clearing will be 

 stocked with young plants in a year or two. 

 We have no pimentos in the United States, 

 but we have raspberries, and how many 

 thousands of acres of these have been 

 planted by our birds ? How many farmers* 

 tables have been supplied with this fruit, 

 without a thought of obligation to the birds. 



