nd placing them in situations where they
ultimately grow. Amongst the latter is the squirrel, which is an
extensive planter of oaks; nay, it may be regarded as having, in some
measure, been one of the creators of the British navy. We have read of a
gentleman who was walking one day in some woods belonging to the Duke of
Beaufort, near Troy House, in Monmouthshire, when his attention was
arrested by a squirrel, sitting very composedly upon the ground. He
stopped to observe its motions, when, in a short time, the little animal
suddenly quitted its position, and darted to the top of the tree beneath
which it had been sitting. In an instant it returned with an acorn in
its mouth, and with its paws began to burrow in the earth. After digging
a small hole, it therein deposited an acorn, which it hastily covered,
and then darted up the tree again. In a moment it was down with another,
which it buried in the same manner; and so continued its labour,
gathering and burying, as long as the gentleman had patience to watch
it. This industry in the squirrel is an instinct which directs it to lay
up a store of provision for the winter; and as it is probable that its
memory is not sufficiently retentive to enable it to recollect all the
spots in which it deposits its acorns, it no doubt makes some slips in
the course of the season, and loses some of them. These few spring up,
and are, in time, destined to supply the place of the parent tree. Thus
may the sons of Britain, in some degree, consider themselves to be
indebted to the industry and defective memory of this little animal for
the production of some of those "wooden walls" which have, for
centuries, been the national pride, and which have so long "braved the
battle and the breeze" on the broad bosom of the great deep, in every
quarter of the civilized globe. As with the squirrel, so with jays and
pies, which plant among the grass and moss, horse-beans, and probably
forget where they have secreted them. Mr. White, the naturalist, says,
that both horse-beans and peas sprang up in his field-walks in the
autumn; and he attributes the sowing of them to birds. Bees, he also
observes, are much the best setters of cucumbers. If they do not happen
to take kindly to the frames, the best way is to tempt them by a little
honey put on the male and female bloom. When they are once induced to
haunt the frames, they set all the fruit, and will hover with impatience
round the lights in a morning ti