United States or Seychelles ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Nurse, you said there were acorns, and hickory-nuts, and beech-mast in the basket. I have seen acorns at home in dear England and Scotland, and I have eaten the hickory-nuts here; but what is beech-mast?
Beech-wood is especially good for fuel. Only the sycamore, the Scotch pine, and the ash give out more heat and light when they burn. Beech-nuts or beech-mast, as it is called are eaten by many animals. Pigs, deer, poultry, &c., are turned into beech-woods to fatten on the mast. Squirrels and dormice delight in it. In France it is used to make beech-oil.
Some were hauling out dusty trunks and dress-baskets, others were already elbow-deep packing their belongings; while everywhere piles and bundles of wheat, oats, barley, beech-mast and nuts, lay about ready for transport. 'Here's old Ratty! they cried as soon as they saw him. 'Come and bear a hand, Rat, and don't stand about idle! 'What sort of games are you up to? said the Water Rat severely.
"Are you mad?" screamed the wood. "Why, I forbade you to cross the fence!" "You are not my mistress," said the heath. "I am doing as I said I would." Then the wood called the red fox and shook her branches so that a quantity of beech-mast fell upon him and remained hanging in his skin: "Run across to the heath, Foxie, and scatter the beech-mast out there!" said the wood.
Is it in granaries for winter stores; and wild ducks and wild pigeons come from the far north at the season when the beech-mast fall, to eat them; for God teaches these, His creatures, to know the times and the seasons when His bounteous hand is open to give them food from His boundless store. A great many other birds and beasts also feed upon the beech-mast."
Its chief food is the beech-mast; but it also lives on acorns, and grain of all sorts especially rice. It is calculated that each bird eats half a pint of food in the day; and when we recollect their numbers, we may conceive what an immense amount must be consumed. The female hatches only one bird at a time, in a nest slightly made of a few twigs, loosely woven into a sort of platform.
"He is not used to such dainties, Lady Mary. In the forest, he feeds upon hickory-nuts, and butter-nuts, and acorns, and beech-mast, and the buds of the spruce, fir and pine kernels, and many other seeds and nuts and berries, that we could not get for him; he loves grain too, and Indian corn.
The Wild Pigeons were flying high above them in great flocks as they sat there, and Yan learned of their great nesting places in the far South, and of their wonderful but exact migrations without regard to anything but food; their northward migration to gather the winged nuts of the Slippery Elm in Canada; their August flight to the rice-fields of Carolina; their Mississippi Valley pilgrimage when the acorns and beech-mast were falling ripe.
The beech was quite hollow in the heart; and they went down through a hole in the branch, and found a store of hazel-nuts, with acorns, hickory-nuts, butter-nuts, and beech-mast, all packed quite close and dry.
It was as if all had orders to move to the same point. The pigeons came only when there was beech-mast in the woods. How did they know we had had a beech-nut year? It is true that a few straggling bands were usually seen some days in advance of the blue myriads: were these the scouts, and did they return with the news of the beech-nuts?
Word Of The Day