No More Learning

I have several times shown the proprietor the shortest
way out of his wood-lot.

Therefore, it would seem that I have some title to speak to you
to-day; and considering what that title is, and the occasion that has
called us together, I need offer no apology if I invite your
attention, for the few moments that are allotted me, to a purely
scientific subject.

At those dinner-tables referred to, I have often been asked, as many
of you have been, if I could tell how it happened, that when a pine
wood was cut down an oak one commonly sprang up, and _vice versa_. To
which I have answered, and now answer, that I can tell,--that it is no
mystery to me. As I am not aware that this has been clearly shown by
any one, I shall lay the more stress on this point. Let me lead you
back into your wood-lots again.

When, hereabouts, a single forest tree or a forest springs up
naturally where none of its kind grew before, I do not hesitate to
say, though in some quarters still it may sound paradoxical, that it
came from a seed. Of the various ways by which trees are _known_ to be
propagated,--by transplanting, cuttings, and the like,--this is the
only supposable one under these circumstances. No such tree has ever
been known to spring from anything else. If any one asserts that it
sprang from something else, or from nothing, the burden of proof lies
with him.

It remains, then, only to show how the seed is transported from where
it grows to where it is planted. This is done chiefly by the agency of
the wind, water, and animals. The lighter seeds, as those of pines and
maples, are transported chiefly by wind and water; the heavier, as
acorns and nuts, by animals.

In all the pines, a very thin membrane, in appearance much like an
insect's wing, grows over and around the seed, and independent of it,
while the latter is being developed within its base. Indeed this is
often perfectly developed, though the seed is abortive; nature being,
you would say, more sure to provide the means of transporting the
seed, than to provide the seed to be transported.
In other words, a
beautiful thin sack is woven around the seed, with a handle to it such
as the wind can take hold of, and it is then committed to the wind,
expressly that it may transport the seed and extend the range of the
species; and this it does, as effectually as when seeds are sent by
mail in a different kind of sack from the Patent Office. There is a
patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose
managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody
at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more
extensive and regular.

There is, then, no necessity for supposing that the pines have sprung
up from nothing, and I am aware that I am not at all peculiar in
asserting that they come from seeds, though the mode of their
propagation _by nature_ has been but little attended to. They are very
extensively raised from the seed in Europe, and are beginning to be
here.

When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not _at once_ spring
up there unless there are, or have been quite recently, seed-bearing
pines near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent
to a forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there,
you will surely have an extension of your pine forest, provided the
soil is suitable.

As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings,
the notion is still a very common one that, when the trees which bear
these spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they
have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there
in an unusual manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for
centuries, or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a
burning. I do not believe these assertions, and I will state some of
the ways in which, according to my observation, such forests are
planted and raised.

Every one of these seeds, too, will be found to be winged or legged in
another fashion. Surely it is not wonderful that cherry trees of all
kinds are widely dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be the
favorite food of various birds. Many kinds are called bird cherries,
and they appropriate many more kinds, which are not so called. Eating
cherries is a bird-like employment, and unless we disperse the seeds
occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the birds have the best
right to them. 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.