together, with the thick husks on, buried about an inch and a half under
the reddish soil of decayed hemlock leaves,--just the right depth to plant
it. In short, this squirrel was then engaged in accomplishing two objects,
to wit, laying up a store of winter food for itself, and planting a
hickory wood for all creation. If the squirrel was killed, or neglected
its deposit, a hickory would spring up. The nearest hickory tree was
twenty rods distant. These nuts were there still just fourteen days later,
but were gone when I looked again, November 21, or six weeks later still.

I have since examined more carefully several dense woods, which are said
to be, and are apparently exclusively pine, and always with the same
result. For instance, I walked the same day to a small, but very dense and
handsome white-pine grove, about fifteen rods square, in the east part of
this town. The trees are large for Concord, being from ten to twenty
inches in diameter, and as exclusively pine as any wood that I know.
Indeed, I selected this wood because I thought it the least likely to
contain anything else. It stands on an open plain or pasture, except that
it adjoins another small pine wood, which has a few little oaks in it, on
the southeast side. On every other side, it was at least thirty rods from
the nearest woods. Standing on the edge of this grove and looking through
it, for it is quite level and free from underwood, for the most part bare,
red-carpeted ground, you would have said that there was not a hard wood
tree in it, young or old. But on looking carefully along over its floor I
discovered, though it was not till my eye had got used to the search,
that, alternating with thin ferns, and small blueberry bushes, there was,
not merely here and there, but as often as every five feet and with a
degree of regularity, a little oak, from three to twelve inches high, and
in one place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a pine.

I confess, I was surprised to find my theory so perfectly proved in this