Our own hazel-nut supplies an excellent illustration of the general tactics adopted by the nuts at large. The little red tufted blossoms which everybody knows so well in early spring are each surrounded by a bunch of three bracts; and as the nut grows bigger, these bracts form a green leaf-like covering, which causes it to look very much like the ordinary foliage of the hazel-tree. Besides, they are thickly set with small prickly hairs, which are extremely annoying to the fingers, and must prove far more unpleasant to the delicate lips and noses of lower animals. Just at present the nuts have reached this stage in our copses; but as soon as autumn sets in, and the seeds are ripe, they will turn brown, fall out of their withered investment, and easily escape notice on the soil beneath, where the dead leaves will soon cover them up in a mass of shrivelled brown, indistinguishable in shade from the nuts themselves. Take, as an example of the more carefully protected tropical kinds, the coco-nut. Growing on a very tall palm-tree, it has to fall a considerable distance toward the earth; and so it is wrapped round in a mass of loose knotted fibre, which breaks the fall just as a lot of soft wool would do. Then, being a large nut, fully stored with an abundance of meat, it offers special attractions to animals, and consequently requires special means of defence. Accordingly, its shell is extravagantly thick, only one small soft spot being left at the blunter end, through which the young plant may push its head. Once upon a time, to be sure, the coco-nut contained three kernels, and had three such soft spots or holes; but now two of them are aborted, and the two holes remain only in the form of hard scars. The Brazil nut is even a better illustration. Probably few people know that the irregular angular nuts which appear at dessert by that name are originally contained inside a single round shell, where they fit tightly together, and acquire their queer indefinite shapes by mutual pressure. So the South American monkey has first to crack the thick external common shell against a stone or otherwise; and, if he is successful in this process, he must afterwards break the separate sharp-edged inner nuts with his teeth--a performance which is always painful and often ineffectual.