84 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
as a perch for one after another of these songsters; every rock and crag make fa- 
vorite places about which numerous seeds are sown. 
Then squirrels come with their stores of nuts for winter use, selecting choice 
spots for store houses, which become well filled as these graceful creatures ply 
often from yonder nut trees to their hiding places. 
The wind blows briskly, and thickly fly the downy thistle, the cottony seeds 
of the willow and populus families: whirling with rapidity come the heavier 
winged seeds of liriodendron, ashes and maples, which, alighting here and there, 
bury their heads ‘neath the soft mud of the water-soaked soil: further on the 
lighter seeds of elm are wafted, strewing the ground as with snow. 
Seeds of herbaceous plants are scattered hither and thither as the winds and 
birds gather them up from the verdant spots, to be strewn where there are none. 
Gently the falling leaves from the adjoining forests spread a light cover, hiding the 
scattered seeds and affording protection from the elements. Soon the snowflakes 
fly thick and fast; a mantle covers the land. As the suriace is melted by the sun 
and frozen when night comes on, the snow crust forms an ideal playground for the 
wind, which, shattering the seeds from cones of hemlock, pine and spruce. drives 
them fiercely over the snow until they are caught by some obstacle. 
Spring comes, with rains; the rushing waters overtlow their banks. picking up 
the twigs with clinging seeds, bear them further down the stream, and spreading 
over the treeless wastes, deposit them to sink into the vielding soil. With the 
warm, life-giving sunshine of spring the seeds thrust downward their rootlets 
while upward reaches a bud, when two tiny leaves appear as harbingers of spring. 
And thus a forest is born. Not in a day, nor a vear, for nature takes her own 
time and methods to accomplish her objects, vet in due time a natural forest covers 
the spot which accident or design had made barren. Here are beech, ash and 
maple, there a clump of elms, a walnut and hickory alternating with blackberry 
briars and elder, hemlock with pine: trees of mammoth proportions and shrubs of 
low degree: ginseng, violet and twining grape strive for space to spread their 
roots and display their peculiar attractions. 
Yonder chestnut will afford abundant nuts for boys and squirrels; these 
hackberries. cherries, grapes and elderberries will feed the birds which planted 
them: that oak may become a gnarled monarch among whose branches birds will 
twitter their songs of love, build their nests in safety and feed upon its countless 
acorns, which, as 1f to acknowledge its dependence upon the birds and small ani- 
mals, it supplies in such abundance. 
Certain birds plant nuts and acorns with systematic regularity, burving them 
‘neath the surface, one in a place. expecting ere long to find its food, either from 
an enclosed egg which will in time become a fat. luscious worm, or else the meat 
of the acorn. 
In Arizona the blue jays gather the pine nuts and bury them singly to a 
depth of an inch or more, in the arid sands. Here they are preserved for months, 
or until the snow has fallen and melted, moistening the seeds. In this manner 
the pinion is planted. 
The wild cherry, but for its tasty, juicy berries, as also the hackberry, would 
soon become extinct or at least confined in narrow limits but for the birds. These 
seeds have no wings to be borne by the winds: they do not readily float upon the 
