The ripened seeds of trees are sent forth with many strange devices and at random for the unoccupied and fertile places of the earth. There are six hundred kinds of trees in North America, and each of these equips its seeds in a peculiar way, that they may take advantage of wind, gravity, water, birds, or beasts to transport them on their home-seeking journey.

The whole seed-sowing story is a fascinating one. Blindly, often thick as snow, the seeds go forth to seek their fortune,—to find a rooting-place. All are in danger, many are limited as to time, and the majority are restricted to a single effort. A few, however, have a complex and novel equipment and with this make a long, romantic, and sometimes an adventurous journey, colonizing at last some strange land far from the place of their birth. Commonly, however, this journey is brief, and usually after one short fall[Pg 292] or flight the seed comes to rest where it will sprout or perish. Generally it dies.

One autumn afternoon in southeastern Missouri, seated upon some driftwood on the shallow margin of the Mississippi, I discovered a primitive craft that was carrying a colony of adventurous tree seeds down the mighty river. As I watched and listened, the nuts pattered upon the fallen leaves and the Father of Waters purled and whispered as he slipped his broad yellow-gray current almost silently to the sea. Here and there a few broad-backed sandbars showed themselves above the surface, as though preparing to rise up and inquire what had become of the water.

This primitive craft was a log that drifted low and heavy, end on with the current. It was going somewhere with a small cargo of tree seeds. Upon a broken upraised limb of the log sat a kingfisher. As it drifted with the current, breezes upon the wooded hill-tops decorated the autumn air with deliberately falling leaves and floating winged seeds. The floating log pointed straight for a sand-bar upon which other logs[Pg 293] and snags were stranded. I determined, when it should come aground, to see the character of the cargo that it carried.

Now and then, as I sat there, the heavy round nuts like merry boys came bounding and rattling down the hillside, which rose from the water\'s edge. Occasionally as a nut dropped from the tree-top he struck a limb spring board and from this made a long leap outward for a roll down the hillside. These nuts were walnut and hickory; and like most heavy nuts they traveled by rolling, floating, and squirrel carriage.

One nut dropped upon a low limb, glanced far outward, and landed upon a log, from which it bounced outward and went bouncing down the hillside aplunk into the river. Slowly it rolled this way and that in the almost currentless water. At last it made up its mind, and, with the almost invisible swells, commenced to float slowly toward the floating log out in the river. By and by the current caught it, carried it toward and round the sand-bar, to float away with the onsweep toward the sea. This nut may have been carried a few miles or a few hundred[Pg 294] before it went ashore on the bank of the river or landed upon some romantic island to sprout and grow. Seeds often are carried by rivers and then successfully planted, after many stops and advances, far from the parent tree.

The log hesitated as it approached the sand-bar, as if cautiously smelling with its big, rooty nose; but at last it swung round broadside, and sleepily allowed the current to put it to bed upon the sand. As a tree, this log had lived on the banks of the Mississippi or one of its tributaries, in Minnesota. While standing it had for a time served as a woodpecker home. In one of the larger excavations made by these birds, I found some white pine cones and other seeds from the north that had been stored by bird or squirrel. A long voyage these seeds had taken; they may have continued the journey, landing at last to grow in sunny Tennessee; or they may have sunk to the bottom of the river or even have perished in the salt waters of the Gulf.

In climbing up the steep hillside above the river, I found many nests of hickory and walnuts against the upper side of fallen logs. Upon the[Pg 295] level hill-top the ground beneath the tree was thickly covered with fallen nuts; only a few of these had got a tree\'s length away from the parent. Occasionally, however, a wind-gust used a long, slender limb as a sling, and flung the attached nuts afar.

The squirrels were active, laying up a hoard of nuts for winter. Many a walnut, hickory, or butternut tree at some distant place may have grown from an uneaten or forgotten nut which the squirrels carried away.

The winged seeds are the ones that are most widely scattered. These are grown by many kinds of trees. From May until midwinter trees of this kind are giving their little atoms of life to the great seed-sower, the wind. Most winged seeds have one wing for each seed and commonly each makes but one flight. Generally the lighter the seed and the higher the wind, the farther the seed will fly or be blown.

In May the silver maple starts the flight of winged seeds. This tree has a seed about the size of a peanut, provided with a one-sided wing as large as one\'s thumb. It sails away from the[Pg 296] tree, settling rapidly toward the earth with heavy end downward, whirling round and round as it falls. Red maple seeds ripen in June, but not until autumn does the hard maple send its winged ones forth from amid the painted leaves.

The seed of an ash tree is like a dart. In the different ashes these are of different lengths, but all have two-edged wings which in calm weather dart the seed to the snowy earth; but in a lively wind they are tumbled and whirled about while being unceremoniously carried afar; this they do not mind, for at the first lull they right themselves and drop in good form to the earth.

Cottonwoods and willows send forth their seeds inclosed in a dainty puff or ball of silky cotton that is so light that the wind often carries it long distances. With the willow this device is so airy and dainty that it is easily entangled on twigs or grass and may never reach the earth. The willow seed, too, is so feeble that it will often perish inside twenty-four hours if it does not find a most favorable germinating-place. This makes but little difference to the willows, for they do not depend upon seeds for[Pg 297] extension but upon the breaking off of roots or twigs by various agencies; these pieces of roots or twigs often are carried miles by streams, and take root perhaps at the first place where they go around.

The seeds of the sycamore are in balls attached to the limbs by a slender twiglet. The winter winds beat and thump these balls against the limbs, thus causing the seeds to loosen and to drop a few at a time to the earth. Each seed is a light little pencil which at one end is equipped with a whorl of hairs,—a parachute which delays its fall and thus enables the wind to carry it away from the parent tree.

The conifers—the pines, firs, and spruces—have ingeniously devised and developed their winged seeds for wind distribution. Most of these seeds are light, and each is attached to a dainty feather or wing which is used on its commencement day. These wings are as handsome as insects\' wings, dainty enough for fairies; they are purple, plain brown, and spotted, and so balanced that they revolve or whirl, glinting in the autumn sun as they go on their adventurous[Pg 298] wind-blown flight to the earth. A high wind may carry them miles.

With the pines and spruces the cones open one or a few scales at a time, so that the seeds from each cone are distributed through many days. The firs, however, carry cones that when ripe often collapse in the wind. The entire filling of seeds are thus dropped at once and fill the air with flocks of merry, diving, glinting wings. A heavy seed-crop in a con............