Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1911 — Propagating a Tree. [ARTICLE]

Propagating a Tree.

The tree which occasionally gets itself propagated in the most interesting way is the elder. W. H. Hudson in his book, "Afoot in England,” has a delightful passage giving the life story of some elders he noticed growing on a Wiltshire down. There was a small group of them set among some rabbit burrows and a local farmer told him how they came there. First, the rabbits, finding that the hill had softer chalk at that spot, had made burrows. Then some wheatears came and nested in and lived about the burrows. The wheatears fed on the berries of an elder growing higher up on the down and so brought the seeds to the burrows, where they rooted in the soft ground and soon established a flourishing thicket.