Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1915-04-08
Shepherdaown Jefferson County, April g. 1915

OiDeT ndnu, MS lesser OTOIner, tne Culp-
munk, will survive him, because he reg
ularly lays up winter stores in his den in
the ground, and is snug and warm with a
full larder, while the red squirrel is pick
ing up a precarious subsistence in the
cold, snow-choked woods. The bear
lasts after the wolf is gone, because he is
a miscellaneous feeder, and is rarely re-
duced to extremities. For the same rea-
son the hawk starveS where the crow
thrives. II the crow cannot get flesh, he
will put up with fruit, and grain, and nuts.
The flycatchers among our birds are
far less numerous than the fruit and seed
eaters, and the herbivorous and graminiv-
orous mammals greatly exceed in num-
bers the flesh eaters they can get their
food more easily, for they do moi have 10
use speed, wit, strength, or prowess, in
order 10 obtain it. How rare are the wea-
sells, compared with their prey ofrats and
mice and birds and squirrels and rabbits |!
Yet the weasels have goodly families each
season. If man had not been a miscella-
neous feeder, could ne have overspread
the earth as he has done? II an animal
can eat only fish, it must keep near the
water; if it can eat only nuts, il must keep
near the woods; if il subsists upon mos
quitoeS, il must live near the marshes; II
grass is IFS only diet, its range is limited
to certain zones and certain seasons.
The farmer finds if much more difficult
to check or exterminate certain plants or
weeds than others. The common milk
weed and the Canada thistle defy his
plough, because the parent root is beyond
its reach; it creeps horizontally through
the soil, and sends up its sho is at short
intervals. To exterminate the plant, you
must remove the parent root. Quack
grass is battling for the same reason
there is family root that travels horizon
tally under the soil and seEds up shoots
all along its course dig out yard oi it,
and yet if you have left an inch, the plant
renews itself. The enterprising chick
weed is one of the very first plants to
start in business in the spring; it begins
to bloom in March or April il natures
its seeds rapidly, and keeps on blooming
and seeding nearly all summer, so that IT
outwits the most industrious hoe or plough.
Unless you catch it in the first blooming,
If gets ahead OF you.
The field veronica is an innocent weed,
but its ability TO get on in life is remarka-
bic. 1t stole into our vineyards like a
thief in the night; where il came from ]
have no knowledge; for twenty years
there was no vestige Of ii; then sudden
ly il appeared, and rapidly overspread
the surface OF the ground. II blooms in
April, and by the time the plough starts,
a sheet OF delicate blue hovers over all
the vineyard slopes. II is low plant,
only an inch or two high, and the plough
wipes il out completely; but the next
spring there il is again, thicker than ever,
painting the ground in the most delicate
cerulean tintS; it natures some OF its
seeds each spring before the plough starts,
and so Is secure.
Sooner or later animals and plants learn
to play the game OF life well if they fail
to do so, they ultimately become extinct.
John Burroughs, in The Youths Com
panion.