celebrities. His principal works
are "Walden, or Life in the Woods," "A Week on Concord and Merrimac
Rivers," "Excursions," "Maine Woods," "Cape Cod," "A Yankee in Canada,"
and "Letters to Various Persons." In descriptive power Mr. Thoreau has
few, if any, superiors.

1. 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. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I hear the sound of green
pignuts falling from time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my head.
In the fall I notice on the ground, either within or in the neighborhood
of oak woods, on all sides of the town, stout oak twigs three or four
inches long, bearing half a dozen empty acorn cups, which twigs have been
gnawed off by squirrels, on both sides of the nuts, in order to make them
more portable. The jays scream and the red squirrels scold while you are
clubbing and shaking the chestnut trees, for they are there on the same
errand, and two of a trade never agree.

5. I frequently see a red or a gray squirrel cast down a green chestnut
burr, as I am going through the woods, and I used to think, sometimes,
that they were cast at me. In fact, they are so busy about it, in the
midst of the chestnut season, that you can not stand long in the woods
without hearing one fall.

6.