limate--there it
will remain and keep on advancing. The oak produces comparatively few
seeds. Where it produces a hundred, the ash and maple will yield a
thousand, the elm ten thousand, and many other trees a hundred
thousand. The acorn has no provision for protection and transportation
like many tree seeds. Many kinds are furnished with wings to float
them on the water and carry them in the air. Nearly every tree seed,
except the acorn, has a case to protect it while growing, either
opening and casting the seeds off to a distance when ripe or falling
with them to protect them till they begin to germinate. Even the
equally large seeds of other kinds are protected in some way. The
hickory nut has a hard shell, which shell itself is protected by a
strong covering until ripe. The black walnut has both a hard shell and
a fleshy covering. The acorn is the only seed I can think of which is
left by nature to take care of itself. It matures without protection,
falls heavily and helplessly to the ground, to be eaten and trodden on
by animals, yet the few which escape and those which are trodden under
are well able to compete in the race for life. While the elm and maple
seeds are drying up on the surface, the hickories and the walnuts
waiting to be cracked, the acorn is at work with its coat off. It
drives its tap root into the earth in spite of grass, and brush, and
litter. No matter if it is shaded by forest trees so that the sun
cannot penetrate, it will manage to make a short stem and a few leaves
the first season, enough to keep life in the root, which will drill in
deeper and deeper. When age or accident removes the tree which has
overshadowed it, then it will assert itself. Fires may run over the
land, destroying almost everything else, the oak will be killed to the
ground, but it will throw up a new shoot the next spring, the root
will keep enlarging, and when the opportunity arrives it will make a
vigorous growth, in proportion to the strength of the root, and throw
out strong side roots, and after that care no more for its tap root,
which has been its only support, than the frog cares for the tail of
the tadpole after it has got on its own legs.

There is no mystery about the succession of forest growths, nothing in
nature is more plain and simple. We cannot but admire her wisdom,
economy, and justness, compensating in another direction for any
disadvantage a species may have to labor under. Every kind of tree has
an