pile of pine-cones, pounding and cracking them and taking out
the long seeds, which are sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which are
almost as good as pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians),
probably does not see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy
here were set at pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly
chestnut-burs as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What a
hardship the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out
with his jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the whole. The boy is
willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.

In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the
boy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; they
leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts. To climb a
tree and shake it, to club it, to strip it of its fruit, and pass to the
next, is the sport of a brief time. I have seen a legion of boys scamper
over our grass-plot under the chestnut-trees, each one as active as if
he were a new patent picking-machine, sweeping the ground clean of nuts,
and disappear over the hill before I could go to the door and speak
to them about it. Indeed, I have noticed that boys don't care much for
conversation with the owners of fruit-trees. They could speedily make
their fortunes if they would work as rapidly in cotton-fields. I have
never seen anything like it, except a flock of turkeys removing the
grasshoppers from a piece of pasture.

Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of
our best military maneuvers from the turkey. The deploying of the
skirmish-line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum-major of
our holiday militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey gobbler;
he has the same splendid appearance, the same proud step, and the same
martial aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, but
goes behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so that he can see
every part of the line and direct its movements. This resemblance is
one of the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch the
gobbler maneuvering his forces in a grasshopper-field. He throws out
his company of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish-line, the
number disposed at equal distances, while he walks majestically in
the rear. They advance rapidly, picking right and left, with military
precision, killing the foe and disposing of the dead bodies