The Seniors of the Forest 299 
travel the cone-scales, which have hitherto been 
pressed together, draw apart, setting their wards 
free. The scales of the firs drop away altogether, 
leaving nothing of the cone but a woody axis. 
The cones of the hemlocks, pines, and spruces 
gradually assume a pendant position while they are 
maturing, so that when their scales separate the 
ripe seeds are at once given to the winds. Thus 
the cone-bearers, like good parents, do their ut- 
most ‘‘in protection of their tender ones.’’ 
But alas! In the vegetable world, no less than 
in the worlds of mice and men, the best-laid 
schemes ‘‘ gang aft aglee.”’ 
For often, in latter summer, one may see a 
squirrel perched upon a pine-branch, holding a 
nearly-ripe cone between his fore-paws. With 
attitudes and actions like those of a little monkey 
he tears away the scales and flings them earth- 
ward, and meantime he feasts eagerly upon the 
seeds whose stores of nutriment were prepared and 
laid away with no foreboding of his sharp claws 
and nibbling teeth thrust impertinently between 
Nature’s plans and their fulfilment. 
