COUNTRY LIFE
A Fruitful Winter
It will be a rich winter for many birds (though let us not on that account omit to feed them). The crop of acorns is immense, though the supply will not exceed the demand. Under one oak villagers were collecting acorns in sacks for pig food and as soon as their backs were turned pigeons and pheasants came to fill their crops almost to bursting point ; and a large supply found at the mouth of a rat hole suggests that the mammals are as keen as the cottagers and the birds. Time was in Britain when the " oak-corn " was sought as food for man as well as beast. The stone or pip fruits are at least as numerous as the nuts, but these are the monopoly of the birds, though some mammals will occasionally eat the stones. It is a little curious that oaks are spread—so it is always said—by rooks who presumably carry off the acorns and drop them by accident. The rook is certainly fond of carrying off his food by the agency of his beak. I have seen them often with walnuts in the beak and once with an egg. The acorn doubtless is sm$l enough to be concealed from a more or less distant observer. Oaks certainly spring up in good quantity over commons and open spaces which are themselves quite innocent of oak trees. So do mountain ashes and thorns, but these grow from undigested pips. The oaks spring from quite a different sort of sowing.
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