preservation of her
species. A year ago last spring the mother pine put forth the
beginnings of those pine cones that now dangle brown and pitchy,
or drop to the ground, useless except as kindlings for my
campfire. Then they were wee golden-green buds of pistillate
flowers, set high on the uppermost branch tips that the pollen
from the tree's own staminate blooms might miss them in its flight
down the wind and thus avoid in breeding. If they miss fertilization
altogether they fall off. It is commonly said that the pines
produce a crop of cones once in five or seven years, which
is true in part, just as the statement that every seventh
wave at sea is larger than any of its preceding six is occasionally
borne out by the facts. I do not recall years in which the
pines have failed to put forth both staminate and pistillate
blossoms. Sometimes frost gets these and they fail to reproduce.
Sometimes a long rain will prevent the pollen from being
disseminated by the wind until its time is passed and again
there is a failure in cones. Only once in a while is the season
perfectly favorable, and then we get that seventh wave in pine
cones and the squirrels rejoice that they can file their teeth and
fill their cheek pouches at the same time. The years when there
are no cones at all sending forth their seeds in September are few
indeed. This year the harvest in my neighborhood has been an
excellent one.

The fertilized bloom soon ceases to be a little Christmas candle
on the tree top, closes its tiny scales over its growing seeds and
becomes a little green cone, still sitting upright on the upper
branch tip where it grew. By autumn it is an inch and a half long,
the short peduncle which attaches it to the branch has lengthened
and thickened, but is not able to hold it wholly erect, so much
has it gained in weight. At that season the young cone and its
fellows have tipped over horizontal or even becomes slightly
pendulous. Thus it remains through the winter, its scales pressed
close to its core and to one another, defending the tender seeds
from all cold and making a seemingly solid chunk of the whole.
Toward spring I have known squirrels to attack these young cones,
but rarely, and I am not sure whether it was because of the
pressure of hunger or whether some young squirrel's instinct to
sharpen his teeth on them made him a bit precocious. These
adolescent cones begin growing again very early in the spring.
Youth will have its w