See how
artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in order that a bird may be
compelled to transport it--in the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so
that the creature that would devour this must commonly take the stone also
into its mouth or bill. If you ever ate a cherry, and did not make two
bites of it, you must have perceived it--right in the centre of the
luscious morsel, a large earthy residuum left on the tongue. We thus take
into our mouths cherry stones as big as peas, a dozen at once, for Nature
can persuade us to do almost anything when she would compass her ends.
Some wild men and children instinctively swallow these, as the birds do
when in a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid of them. Thus,
though these seeds are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has
impelled the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with
them; and they are winged in another sense, and more effectually than the
seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the wind. The
consequence is, that cherry-trees grow not only here but there. The same
is true of a great many other seeds.
But to come to the observation which suggested these remarks. As I have
said, I suspect that I can throw some light on the fact, that when
hereabouts a dense pine wood is cut down, oaks and other hard woods may at
once take its place. I have got only to show that the acorns and nuts,
provided they are grown in the neighborhood, are regularly planted in such
woods; for I assert that if an oak-tree has not grown within ten miles,
and man has not carried acorns thither, then an oak wood will not spring
up _at once_, when a pine wood is cut down.
Apparently, there were only pines there before. They are cut off, and
after a year or two you see oaks and other hard woods springing up there,
with scarcely a pine amid them, and the wonder commonly is, how the seed
could have lain in the ground so long without decaying. But the truth is,
that it has not lain in the ground so long, but is regularly planted each
year by various quadrupeds and birds.
In this neighborhood, where oaks and pines are about equally dispersed,
if you look through the thickest pine wood, even the seemingly unmixed
pitch-pine ones, you will commonly detect many little oaks, birches, and
other hard woods, sprung from seeds carried into the thicket by squirrels
and other animals, and also blown thither, but which are over-shadowed and
choked by the pines. The denser the evergreen wood, the more likely it is
to be well planted with these seeds, because the planters incline to
resort with their forage to the closest covert. They also carry it into
birch and other woods. This planting is carried on annually, and the
oldest seedlings annually die; but when the pines are cleared off, the
oaks, having got just the start they want, and now secured favorable
conditions, immediately spring up to trees.
The shade of a dense pine wood, is more unfavorable to the springing up of
pines of the same species than of oaks within it, though the former may
come up abundantly when the pines are cut, if there chance to be sound
seed in the ground.
But when you cut off a lot of hard wood, very often the little pines mixed
with it have a similar start, for the squirrels have carried off the nuts
to the pines, and not to the more open wood, and they commonly make pretty
clean work of it; and moreover, if the wood was old, the sprouts will be
feeble or entirely fail; to say nothing about the soil being, in a
measure, exhausted for this kind of crop.
