be safe?"

William said "No; the boys would pick and eat them before they had time
to grow."

"Well, what harm would there be in that? Would it not be as well to have
the chestnuts early in the summer as to have them in the fall?"

William hesitated. Another boy who sat next to him said,

"There would not be so much meat in the chestnuts if they were eaten
before they had time to grow."

"Right," said the master; "but would not the boys know this, and so all
agree to let the little chestnuts stay, and not eat them while they were
small?"

William said he thought they would not. If the chestnuts were good, he
was afraid they would pick them off and eat them if they were small.

All the rest of the boys in the school thought so too.

"Here, then," said the master, "is one reason for having prickles around
the chestnuts when they are small. But then it is not necessary to have
all chestnuts guarded from boys in this way; a great many of the trees
are in the woods, which the boys do not see; what good do the burrs do
in these trees?"

The boys hesitated. Presently the boy who had the green satchel under
the tree with Roger, who was sitting in one corner of the room, said,

"I should think they would keep the squirrels from eating them.

"And besides," continued he, after thinking a moment, "I should suppose,
if the meat of the chestnut had no covering, the rain would wet it and
make it rot, or the sun might dry and wither it."

"Yes," said the master, "these are very good reasons why the nut should
be carefully guarded. First the meats are packed away in a hard brown
shell, which the water can not get through; this keeps it dry, and away
from dust and other things which might injure it. Then several nuts thus
protected grow closely together inside this green, prickly covering,
which spreads over them and guards them from the larger animals and the
boys. Where the chestnut gets its full growth and is ripe, this
covering, you know, splits open, and the nuts drop out, and then any
body can get them and eat them."

The boys were then all satisfied that it was better that chestnuts
should grow in burrs.

"But why," asked one of the boys, "do not apples grow so?"

"Can any body answer that question?" asked the master.

The boy with the green satchel said that apples had a smooth, tight
skin, which kept out the wet, but he did not see how they were guarded
from animals.

The master said it was by their taste.