29 October 1860 – 4 November 1860

P. M. — To Eb. Hubbard’s old black birch hill. Henry Shattuck’s is a new pitch pine wood, say thirty years old. The western, or greater, part contains not a single seed-bearing white pine. It is a remarkable proof of my theory, for it contains thousands of little white pines but scarcely one little pitch pine. It is also well stocked with minute oak seedlings. It is a dense wood, say a dozen rods wide by three or four times as long, running east and west, with an oak wood on the north, from which the squirrels brought the acorns. A strip of nearly the same width of the pitch pine was cut apparently within a year on the south (a part of the above), and has just been harrowed and sown with rye, and still it is all dotted over with the little oak seedlings between the [stumps], which are perhaps unnoticed by Shattuck, but if he would keep his plow and fire out he would still have a pretty green patch there by next fall. A thousand little red flags (changed oak leaves) already wave over the green rye amid the stumps. The farmer stumbles over these in his walk, and sweats while he endeavors to clear the land of them, and yet wonders how oaks ever succeed to pines, as if he did not consider what these are. Where these pines are dense they are slender and tall. On the edge or in open land they are more stout and spreading. Again, as day before yesterday, sitting on the edge of a pine wood, I see a jay fly to a white oak half a dozen rods off in the pasture, and, gathering an acorn from the ground, hammer away at it under its foot on a limb of the oak, with an awkward and rapid seesaw or teetering motion, it has to lift its head so high to acquire the requisite momentum. The jays scold about almost every white oak tree, since we hinder their coming to it. At some of the white oaks visited on the 11th, where the acorns were so thick on the ground and trees, I now find them perhaps nearly half picked up, yet perhaps little more than two thirds spoiled. The good appear to be all sprouted now. There are certainly many more sound ones here than at Beck Stow’s and Hubbard’s Grove, and it looks as if the injury had been done by frost, but perhaps some of it was done by the very heavy rains of September alone. Yesterday and to-day I have walked rapidly through extensive chestnut woods without seeing what I thought was a seedling chestnut, yet I can soon find them in our Concord pines a quarter or half a mile from the chest- nut woods. Several have expressed their surprise to me that they cannot find a seedling chestnut to transplant. I think that [it] is with them precisely as with the oaks; not only a seedling is more difficult to distinguish in a chestnut wood, but it is really far more rare there than in the adjacent pine, mixed, and oak woods. After con- siderable experience in searching for these and seedling oaks, I have learned to neglect the chestnut and oak woods and go only to the neighboring woods of a differ- ent species for them. Only that course will pay. On the side of E. Hubbard’s hill I see an old chestnut stump some two feet in diameter and nearly two feet high, and its outside and form well kept, yet all the inside gone; and from this shot up four sprouts in a square around it, which were cut down seven or eight years ago. ‘Their rings number forty-six, and they are quite sound, so that the old stump was cut some fifty- three years ago. This is the oldest stump of whose age I am certain. Hence I have no doubt that there are many stumps left in this town which were cut in the last century. I am surprised to find on this hill (cut some seven or eight years ago) many remarkably old stumps wonderfully preserved, especially on the north side the hill, — walnuts, white oak and other oaks, and black birch. One white oak is eighteen and a half inches in diameter and has one hundred and forty-three rings. ‘This is very one-sided in its growth, the centre being just four inches from the north side, or thirty-six rings to an inch. Of course I counted the other side. Another, close by, gave one hundred and forty-one rings, another white oak fifteen and a half inches in diameter had one hundred and fifty-five rings. It has so smooth (sawed off) and solid, almost a polished or marble-like, surface that I could not at first tell what kind of wood - it was.'| Another white oak the same as last in rings, v. e. one hundred and fifty-five, twenty-four inches [in] diameter. All these were sound to the very core, so that I could see the first circles, and I suspect that they were seedlings. The smaller, but oldest ones had grown very slowly at first, and yet more slowly at last, but after some sixty- five years they had then grown much faster for about fifteen years, and then grew slower and slower to the last. The rings were exceedingly close together near the outside, yet not proportionably difficult to count. For aught that appeared, they might have continued to grow a century longer. The stumps are far apart, so that this formed an open grove, and that probably made the wood sounder and more durable. On the south slope many white pines had been cut about forty- six years ago, or when the chestnut was, amid the oaks. I suppose that these were seedlings, and perhaps the hill was cleared soon after the settlement of the town, and after a while pines sprang up in the open land, and seedling oaks under the pines, and, the latter being cut near the end of the seventeenth century, those oaks sprang up, with or without pines, but all but these were cut down when they were about sixty years old. If these are seedlings, then seedlings make much the best timber. I should say that the pasture oaks gen- erally must be seedlings on account of their age, being part of the primitive wood. I suspect that sprouts, like the chestnut, for example, may grow very rapidly, and make large trees in com- paratively few years, but they will be decaying [?] as fast at the core as they are growing at the circumference. The stumps of chestnuts, especially sprouts, are very shaky. It is with men as with trees; you must grow slowly to last long. The oldest of these oaks began their existence about 1697. I doubt if there were any as old trees in our primitive wood as stood in this town fifty years ago. The health- lest of the primitive wood, having at length more room, light, and air, probably grew larger than its ancestors. Some of the black birch stumps gave about one hundred rings. The pasture oak which Sted Buttrick cut some seven or eight years ago, northeast of this, was, as near as I could tell, — one third was calculation, — some one hundred years old only, though larger than any of these. The fine chips which are left on the centre of a large stump preserve it moist there, and rapidly hasten its decay. The site of the last-named pasture oak was easily discovered, by a very large open grass-sward where no sweet-fern, lambkill, huckleberry, and brakes grew, as they did almost everywhere else. This may be be- cause of the cattle assembling under the oak, and so killing the bushes and at the same time manuring the ground for grass. There is more chestnut in the northern part of the town than I was aware of. The first large wood north of Ponkawtasset is oak and chestnut. East of my house.

P. M.— To Tarbell pitch pines, etc. Quite a sultry, cloudy afternoon, — hot walking in woods and lowland where there is no air. J. Hosmer cut off the northernmost part of his pitch pine between roads, 2. e. next the factory road, last winter. Here was a remarkable example of little white pines under pitch pines with scarcely any little pitch pines. He has accordingly cut off all the pitch pines — and they are some thirty-five years old — and left the white pines, now on an average five to eight feet high and forming already a pretty dense wood (E. Wood is doing the same thing now opposite the Colburn place), a valuable and salable woodland, while a great many little oaks, birches, black cherries, etc., are springing up in their midst; so that it may finally be a mixed wood, if the pines do not overshadow it too quickly. Yet there were only three or four seed- bearing white pines in the grove, —or as big as the pitch pines were. The white pines left are as thick as the pitch pines were under which they sprang up; quite dense enough to grow. I am more and more struck by the commonness of this phenomenon of seedling white pines under older pitch pines and the rareness with which pitch pines spring up under older pitch pines. Yet, going to the open land on east side of the wood, I find that it is mainly the little pitch pines that are spreading into the field there and extending the wood, some a dozen rods from its edge in the grass; and their relative proportion is reversed, 2. e., there are fifty to one hundred little pitch pines here to one white pine. He had also cut off some, a few, birches, and their sprouts had come up, as well as seedlings. The oak seedlings between the young pitch pines were manifestly springing up with new vigor, though many may finally be choked by the white pines. Omit- ting such as were of the character of sprouts, though not cut (2. e., had shot up from old roots to three feet high merely on account of the influx of light and air), I measured this year’s growth of the first four which were under a foot high, here where the pitch pines had been cut, and found it to average five and a half inches. The growth of [the] first four in the adjacent pitch pine wood not cut averaged seven and a half. As may be seen, this was not nearly fair enough to the partially cleared part, for I should have included the higher shoots. The higher parts of this lot are cladonia land. I measured the diameter of several of the pitch pine stumps and counted the rings, with this result: — Diameter (exclusive of bark) Rings 74 inches 29 Ty 33 6 40 6} 33 6 40 84 35 Mi 80 7)482 7)240 7 34 That is, they averaged seven inches in diameter (or eight with bark) and were thirty-four years old. Had grown (68)7.0(.10) about one tenth of an inch a year from the centre. White pines will find their way up between pitch pines if they are not very large and exceedingly dense, but pitch pines will not grow up under pitch pines. I see nowadays in the pitch pine woods countless white toadstools which have recently been devoured and broken in pieces and left on the ground and oc- casionally on the branches or forks of trees, no doubt by the squirrels. They appear to make a considerable part of their food at this season. See a small copper butterfly. In what I have called the Loring lot, next west of Hosmer’s pitch pine on the back road, though far the greater part numerically is still shrub oak, there is now a considerable growth of young oaks rising above the shrub oaks. These oaks, as far as I observe, are almost, if not quite, all sprouts from small stumps which were unnoticed at first, and there are also a very few seed- ling white and other oaks no higher than the shrub oaks; 2. e., though you may think his oak sprout-land all shrub oak, it probably is not, as will appear when the other kinds rise above the shrubs. Probably the shrub oaks can bear exposure when young better than the nobler oaks, and if the squirrels plant other acorns under them, — which may be doubted, — then it will turn out that they serve as nurses to the others. I measure amid these young oaks a white pine stump. Diameter (exclusive of bark) Rings 134 inches 35 Another 28 52 Ey 46 3)65} 188 22 44 Average growth one half mch a year at the level at which stumps are sawed. This lot is now as exclusively oak as it was pines before. You must search to find a few little white pines scattered in it. But why, if there are so many little white pines under the adjacent pitch pines, which are left when the pitch pines are cut, were there no more to be left under the pitch pine part (along the road) of this lot? I think of no reason, unless the pitch pmes on this lot were too old and dense. Again, I notice that Hosmer’s pitch pines have not spread west at all into this clearing, but only east into the grass ground. Into this Loring lot years ago the squirrels brought acorns, and hence the oaks which now cover it. Also the wind blew its own seeds into an open strip across the road, and a dense pitch and white pine wood sprang up there. Already, the Loring lot having been cut seven or eight years, the squirrels are carrying the shrub oak acorns from it into that pine strip, and the pine seed from the most forward of that strip is blowing back into the shrub oak land. Another advantage the shrub oak has over other oaks [is] that it gets to fruit so quickly — certainly in three or four years after the pines are cut — and then bears so profusely. See a great flock of blackbirds, probably grackles. Examine Tarbell’s pitch pine grove. This is all of one age and very dense. The largest trees on the north side, as estimated by sawing a branch, are twenty- eight to thirty years old. Tarbell says this grove came up in 1826 on land which had been burnt over, — in fact open land. It is so dense that, though it has been thoroughly trimmed up and is only a dozen or fifteen rods wide, you cannot see through it in some directions. About as dense a pitch pine grove as I know. It 1s twenty rods from the nearest wood on one side and five times as far from any other, and yet it is well planted with seedling oaks. Looking hastily to where they are most numerous, I counted ten within fifteen square feet, but only five pitch pines within any equal area; 2. e. there were twice as many oaks as large pines there. This wood also proves my theory of little white pines in large pitch pines. There is not a seed-bearing white pine, or one six feet high, in the wood, nor less than twenty rods from it, and yet there is a thriving little white pine some two feet high at every rod or two within this wood, and though not very numerous, they are conspicuously more numerous and thriving than the pitch pines, yet on the edge the little pitch pines were as much more numerous than the white. Having seen this fall a great many pitch pine twigs which had been cut off and dropped under the trees by squirrels, I tried the other night while in bed to ac- count for it. I began by referring it to their necessities, and, remembering my own experience, I said then it was done either for food, shelter, clothmg, or fuel, but throwing out the last two, which they do not use, it was either for food or shelter. But I never see these twigs used in their nests. Hence I presume it was for food, and as all that I know them to eat on the pitch pine is its seeds, my swift conclusion was that they cut off these twigs in order to come at the cones and also to make them more portable. I am to-day convinced of this, — for I have been looking after it for a day or two. As usual, the ground under this grove is quite strewn with the twigs, but here is one eleven inches long and nearly half an inch thick cut off close below two closed cones, one cone-stem also being partly cut. Also, three or four rods west from this grove, in open land, I see three twigs which have been dropped close together. One Is just two feet long and cut off where half an inch thick and more than one foot below three cones (two on one branch and one on another), and the cones are left. Another is still larger, and the other smaller, but their cones are gone. ‘The greater part of the twigs have been cut off above the cones, — mere plumes. So even the squirrels carry and spread the pine seed far over the fields. I suspect that they bury these cones like nuts. I have seen the cones collected ready to be carried off, where they did not live. It is remark- able to consider how rudely they strip and spoil the trees. It is remarkable how they carried some of these great twigs with their burden of cones." The fact that the lower limbs of pines growing within a wood always die shows how much they depend on light and air. They are only a green spiring top. Measure one of Tarbell’s black birch stumps: 23 inches [in] diameter (exclusive of bark), 60 rings. A log from a different one: 21 inches, 71 (?) rings. A white oak stump near by: 15 inches, 90 rings (on brow of bank). A black (?) oak stump: 32 inches [in] diameter, 84 rings. Examine a dozen white pines in a field, and conclude from these that they begin to grow faster the fifth or sixth year, counting by the whorls of branches. J. Hosmer cut off his little pitch pine grove west of Clamshell, and left the single large old pine which seeded it to do him the same service again; and here now, where for the second time (since) he has sown winter-rye, I see the ineffectual oak sprouts uplifting a few colored leaves still and blushing for him. The squirrels have no notion of starving in a hard | winter, and therefore they are unceasingly employed in the fall in foraging. Every thick wood, especially evergreens, is their storehouse against necessity, and they pack it as thickly as they can with nuts and seeds of all kinds. The squirrel which you see at this season running so glibly along the fence with his tail waving over his head, with frequent pauses on a post or stone, which you watch, perhaps, for twenty or thirty rods, has probably a nut or two in his mouth which he is conveying to yonder thicket. Evidently a great deal depends on the locality and other conditions of a stump to affect its durability. The oak stump at Clamshell cut some twenty years since barely shows a trace of the axe, while the chestnut stump on Hubbard’s hill, cut more than fifty years ago, is much better preserved.

P. M. —'To Wheeler’s artificial pine wood. Exclusive and dense white pine woods are not nearly so common in this town as the same kind of pitch pine woods. They are more likely to have oaks in them. There is a dense birch wood in Witherell Vale. Among old stumps I have not named those white pine ones used as fences with their roots. I think that some of these must be older than any left in the ground. I remember some on the Comer road, which apparently have not changed for more than thirty years, and are said to be ninety years old. Lying thus high and dry, they are almost indestructible, and I can still easily count the rings of many of these. I count one hundred and twenty-six rings on one this afternoon, and who knows but it is a hundred years since it was cut? ‘They decay much faster left upright in the ground than lying on their sides on the surface, supposing it open land in both cases. Perhaps these great pine roots which grew in a swamp were provided with some peculiar quality by which to resist the influence of moisture and so endure the changes of the weather. Yes, these dense and stretching oak forests, whose withered leaves now redden and rustle on the hills for many a New England mile, were all planted by the labor of animals. For after some weeks of close scrutiny I cannot avoid the conclusion that our modern oak woods sooner or later spring up from an acorn, not where it has fallen from its tree, for that is the exception, but where it has been dropped or placed by an animal. Consider what a vast work these forest-planters are doing! I do not state the facts exactly in the order in which they were observed, but select out of very numerous ob- servations extended over a series of years the most im- portant ones, and describe them in their natural order.’ So far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones. Looked at the white pine grove set out by the father of Francis Wheeler some twenty-two or three years ago southwest of his house. They are in three or four irreg- ular rows some eighteen rods long by four wide, — some one hundred trees, covering half an acre of sandy hillside. Probably not so many trees as Emerson’s, but making more show. They are trimmed up. There are neither small white nor pitch pines beneath them, but I see that the seeds of the pitch pmes which grow below them have been blown through this grove and come up thickly along its outer edge. Look at a pure strip of old white pine wood on the hill- side west of this. There are no little white pines coming up under them, but plenty of them in the open hollows around and under its edge. This I commonly notice. White pies, it is true, may come up in the more open parts of any wood, whether a pine or oak or mixed wood, in more open places caused by cutting, for instance; but the pitch pme requires much more of an opening. I see by the road east of White Pond a large white pine wood with some oaks in it. There are no little white pines where it is dense, but one rod off across the road eastward there is a dense row concealing the lower rail (many quite under it) for many rods, — the only place where they are allowed to grow there. Many a man’s field has a dense border of pitch pines which strayed into it when the adjacent woods were of that species, though they are now hardwood. Consider what a demand for arrowheads there must be, that the surface of the earth should be thus sprin- kled with them, — the arrowhead and all the disposition it implies toward both man and brute. There they lie, pointed still, making part of the sands of almost every field. I cut two shrub oaks (in different places) which have respectively ten and twenty rings. The last was a large and old one in a hedge.’ I first noticed the pitch pine twigs cut off by squirrels the 16th. Think how busy they were about that time in every pitch pine grove all over the State, cutting off the twigs and collecting the cones! While the farmer is digging his potatoes and gathering his corn he little thinks of this harvest of pine cones which the squirrel is gathering in the neighboring woods still more sedu- lously than himself. I saw on the 28th, close by the stump of the eastern- most big chestnut at Flint’s Pond, the Phallus impudicus.

2P.m.— To Tommy Wheeler wood-lot. A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1p. mM. and probably warmer at two. The butterflies are out again, — probably some new broods. I see the common yellow and two Vanessa Antiopa, and yellow-winged grasshoppers with blackish edges. A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves. Very much gossamer on the withered grass is shimmer- ing in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler’s land, about that now frosty hollow, cut as I judge from sprouts four years ago. First the pitch pine: — 1 is 18} inches [in] diameter and has 145 (?) rings 2 18 % 137 P 8 90 ec 6é ce 198 6é 4 21 . es “ 148 a & ‘I q - *“ 140 a 6 223 * a ** 160 + 4 (Counted the last 64 at home) 7 20 * 6s “ 167 or 168 (?) 7 )1414 7)1026-+4 Average 20 Average 147+1, or 148 That is, they all together averaged in growth from first to last about a fifteenth of an inch in a year. But they grew very slowly indeed for the last fifty or more years. They did nearly half (?) their growing in the first third of their existence. For example, (1 measure now on that side where I counted, 7. e. the broadest, so that. my figures are not absolutely but relatively true), — No. 2 grew 5 inches in first 32 years — s ‘** 50 and 3% in second 50 6 ee 74 6e¢ 66 50 66 Qh 66 66 7 ce 44 e¢ ec 50 6¢ Q3 ce 66 21} 182 3)8%4 150 A little more than 4 inch a year. Average 37, inch. The 7th grew only something less than three inches (which was all of the sap) in the last sixty-seven or eight years, or one twenty-second of an inch a year only. Indeed, in one case, the 6th, the outside had grown only one and one fourth inches in sixty-four years, or about one fiftieth of an inch in a year, just one inch in the last fifty-three years, or one fifty-third of an inch a year, — equal to the finest scales. I should say that they aver- aged but one thirty-sixth part of an inch the third or last fifty years. Ist 50 2d 50 3d 50 3 inch vs ve That is, their rate of growth the three successive periods of fifty years diminishes in geometrical progression, the quotient being two. The seven pitch pine stumps measured on the 30th averaged thirty-four years and had grown a tenth of an inch in a year. This 1s a perfect and remarkable agree- ment, and quite unlooked for. ‘They were a mile apart, and I was not reminded of those previous measure- ments until I chanced to compare them afterward. I may therefore take this to be [the] average growth of a pitch pine for the first fifty years. But I have not yet taken into the account the fact that, though the thickness of the layer is less, its superficies, or extent, is greater, as the diameter of the tree increases. Let us compare the three portions of wood. If the diameter at the end of the first fifty years is four, the second fifty, six, and the third fifty, seven, then the amount of wood added each term will be (to omit very minute fractions) twelve and a half, fifteen and a half, and ten respectively.’ So that, though in the second fifty the rings are twice as near together, yet considerably more wood is produced than in the first, but in the third fifty the tree is evidently enfeebled, and it probably is not profitable (so far as bulk is concerned) to let it grow any more. i The very oldest trees whose rings I have counted (2. e. these pitch pines and the oaks on Eb. Hubbard’s hill) grew thus slowly at last, which I think indicates that a tree has a definite age after which it grows more languidly or feebly, and thus gradually ceases to grow at all,—dies and decays. I should say that these pitch pines flourished till they were about a hundred years old, and that they then began to grow with less vigor, though their old age (in this sense) might be a third or more of their whole life. Two or three more were dead or nearly dead when sawed four years ago, and I saw the rotted stumps of some others. There were twenty or thirty of the pitch pines, — though I measured the largest of them, —and they were all but one or two perfectly sound to the core, and the inmost rings were the plainest. The sap was only from one and three quarters to three inches thick, and was the most decayed. (It was one and three quarters inches thick in No. 6.) The bark was gen- erally from two to two and three quarters inches thick. This would have added four and three quarters to the average diameter of the trees, or made it twenty- four and three quarters. That is, where sawed off, which was rather low, or say eight to ten inches above ground. There were also as many or more large white pines mixed with them. One of 24 inches diameter had 78 rings; second, 31 inches, 96 rings. Also one hemlock 21 inches, 81 rings. This had grown with remarkable equality throughout ' and was very easy to count. An oak (probably black), 14 inches, 94 rings. About a hundred and fifty years ago, then, there came up in and around this hollow in the woods a grove of pitch pines. Perhaps some came up twenty or thirty years earlier, which have now died and decayed. When the first had grown for about sixty years, many white pines sprang up amid and under them, as we see hap- pen to-day. I occasionally (or frequently) see white pines spring- ing up in a sprout-land when other trees have failed to fill it up for some years. No. 6, having 164 rings and having been cut four years, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635. In another case I counted fifteen rings (with a mi- croscope) within the last quarter of an inch, which was at the rate of one sixtieth of an inch in a year, — equal, I think, to the finest scales ordinarily used.

P. M.— To D. Wetherbee’s old oak lot. As several days past, it has been cloudy and misty in the morning and fairer and warmer, if not Indian summer, in the afternoon; yet the mist lingers in oe on the cobwebs and grass until night.

P. M. — To Tommy Wheeler’s lot. As I go over John Hosmer’s High Level, there being considerable wind, I notice for the first time that pe- culiar blueness of the river agitated by the wind and contrasting with the tawny fields, a fall phenomenon. Tarbell’s white pine grove northwest of the Irishman’s, in the swamp, and some thirty to forty years old, is so dense that there is no growth under it, only a tawny carpet of pine-needles. In the Tommy Wheeler lot south of the old pitch pine hollow, I see the stumps of many white pines and oaks which were cut some four years ago, and no fire has been set there. These oak stumps have generally fifty- three or fifty-four rings, though some pitch pines and oaks are much older; but I scarcely see a stump of this age even which has sent up any shoots. I notice one. The sprouts are from a much younger growth. It is evident that all the larger stumps were too old and ~ effete, young as they were. In two or three cases I notice these stumps of oaks cut some four years ago and having fifty-three or four rings (from which no shoot has put forth), two together, half inclosing in a semicircle a very old and almost completely decayed stump, which, of course, was cut some fifty-eight years ago. These sprouts are rarely sound quite to the core. Perhaps the rest are sprouts whose stumps have quite disappeared, and this, 2. e. the great age of the roots, may account for its sending up no more sprouts. I see, then, that the stumps of trees which were cut sixty years ago are still very common to be seen in our woods. I have but little doubt that if Wetherbee’s old oak lot should now be cut no sprouts would come up from the stumps. It is by seeds that oaks would have to be renewed there, if at all; but rather it is time for a differ- ent growth, z. e. for pines, and if he contemplates the removal of these oaks he should be considering how to favor the growth of pines there. ‘They are already appearing thinly on various sides within that wood. I frequently notice the seeds of small fruits and weeds left on stumps by birds and mice and even foxes (in their excrement). There is primitive wood which has never been touched by the civilized man. We have none of this. Then there is primitive woodland, 1. e., which has never been cut clean off, and which in age now 1s mostly second growth. Then there is primitive copsewood, 1. e., which has been cut clean off but suffered to grow up again without further clearing or burning. Then copsewood of other kinds. Sophia brings me the drawer which held her acorns (almost all red oak). It is seventeen and a half inches by twelve and a half and two inches deep, and I count, crawling about on the bottom, one hundred and seventy- three great full-grown grubs with brown heads, which have come out of the acorns by a hole, oftenest at the edge of the cup on one side. And many of the grubs had been thrown away, and probably some had crawled away within a month, and no doubt more are still to come out. Also the bottom of this box is covered with four or five times as many minute pink grubs which may be the progeny of the former: here are at least eight hundred and sixty-five (or say one thousand) grubs to about four quarts of acorns with their cups (the box was hardly more than half full). I find that sixty red oak acorns with their cups make one pint. There were, therefore, about five hundred acorns to one hundred and seventy-three large grubs already out in the box, to say nothing of those that have been thrown and have crawled away, nor of the seven or eight hundred young grubs and probably more yet to be produced. Not quite half of the acorns, then, have grubs in them.’ Now add the squirrels, jays, crows, and other birds and quad- rupeds that feed on them, and the effect of the winter’s cold and rain, and how many of the acorns of this year will be fit to plant next spring ? ns T SS =m Www i OOM RC —Fe——EeEE—————————EE———————EEE EEE CT — Te ~ yer =e It appears that nearly half of these red oaks have already manifestly been destroyed by worms. It is evi- dent that there will be at least two grubs to one of these acorns, though of course the grubs will not always be with the acorn. This is one of the nut weevils, and since they come from eggs laid by a beetle, 1t would seem that many eggs must have been recently laid. White birch seed has but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have begun for a week. To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Perhaps they feed on the birch seed as the linarias do. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive fromthe north.