There remain to be fed through the winter only a small pro-
portion of the birds and a larger proportion of the mammals,
including ourselves. All these are by nature improvident—
given to eating to excess when there is plenty, forgetting
future needs. So, she makes it impossible that any lusty
foragers, or all of them put together, shall be able to dissipate
and waste her patrimony. She keeps it in a considerable part
from them against the hour of need. If she grows luscious
fruits, which, when ripe, will fall into their mouths she also,
grows roots underground, and imposes the labor of digging to
get them. If some of her seeds ripen all at once and fall
readily, others ripen at intervals, and are held tightly in their
husks. It takes labor to get them. The animals that eat in
winter have to work their way.
Nature’s population is suited to her
products. Her seed-eating rodents
are all armed with stout chisel-like
teeth, adapted for cutting anything,
from the nut shells to chaff. Her
a seed-eating birds are armed with stout,

® < seed-cracking, husk-opening beaks.
be Her little birds are agile, and can
cling with their feet to swaying twigs,

PUG. 38 a mcialized seed and ravage the loaded seed cones


pre reothot a norcupine; pendant upon them. The beaks of


arenes of a cross- the crossbills, are especially adapted to


ing the seeds of pine extracting the seeds from the cones of
our evergreen trees.
The seeds we cultivate for food are cereals and lentils.
