LXII 
NUT CAMOUFLAGE 
I SN'T IT ODD that there is a vital, life-and-death 
reason back of the fact that nuts are green when they 
are hanging on the tree but turn brown when the time 
comes to fall off! 
The green, one may observe, matches the leaves among 
which they hang, but the brown is like those that are 
dead and lie on the ground. In each situation the nut is 
raising a color scheme that will help it to hide. 
Some nuts have bitter hulls, and some have prickly 
hulls which often save them from being cracked. Round 
nuts can roll far and so find new spots for growing. 
Woody nuts may float far away in search of new homes. 
Nuts may escape many enemies, but not the squirrel. 
Yet this squirrel, seeming to be the worst enemy of the 
nut-bearing trees because he eats their fruit all the time, 
is really their best friend. He gathers nuts in the autumn, 
digs neat holes in the ground in which to hide them, and 
forgets to go back for many of them, which, in the spring, 
find themselves neatly planted for growing. 
The trees put meat in their nuts for two purposes. 
One is that they may induce animals to carry them away 
so that they may start in a new home. This pays them in 
the case of the squirrel, but when hogs come into the woods 
in the autumn to fatten on the mast, they eat many 
acorns and help not at all in the planting. The service 
of the squirrel, however, which would not be rendered but 
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