and both in full glory of
bloom. There could not have been a more beautiful, natural, or dignified
entrance; and it was just as beautiful in the early fall, when the deep
green of the oblong-toothed leaves had changed to clear and glowing
yellow, while the flowers had left their perfect work in the swelling
and prickly green burs which hid nuts of a brown as rich as the flesh
was sweet.

Did you, gentle reader, ever saunter through a chestnut grove in the
later fall, when the yellow had been browned by the frosts which brought
to the ground alike leaves and remaining burs? There is something
especially pleasant in the warmth of color and the crackle of sound on
the forest floor, as one really shuffles through chestnut leaves in the
bracing November air, stooping now and then for a nut perchance
remaining in the warm and velvety corner of an opened bur.

Here in Pennsylvania, and south of Mason and Dixon's line, there grows a
delightful small tree, brother to the chestnut, bearing especially sweet
little nuts which we know as chinquapins. They are darker brown, and the
flesh is very white, and rich in flavor. I could wish that the
chinquapin, as well as the chestnut, was included among the trees that
enlightened Americans would plant along roadsides and lanes, with other
fruit trees; the specific secondary purpose, after the primary enjoyment
of form, foliage and flower, being to let the future passer-by eat
freely of that fruit provided by the Creator for food and pleasure, and
costing no more trouble or expense than the purely ornamental trees more
frequently planted.

Both chestnut and chinquapin are beautiful ornamental trees; and some of
the newer chestnut hybrids, of parentage between the American and the
European species, are as graceful as the most highly petted lawn trees
of the nurserymen. Indeed, the very same claim may be made for a score
or more of the standard fruit trees, alike beautiful in limb tracery, in
bloom, and in the seed-coverings that we are glad to eat; and some time
we shall be ashamed not to plant the fruit trees in public places, for
the pleasure and the refreshing of all who care.

[Illustration: The chinquapin]

One of the commonest nut trees, and certainly one of the most pleasing,
is the hickory. There are hickories and hickories, and some are
shellbarks, while others are bitternuts or pignuts. The form most
familiar to the Eastern States is the shagbark hickory, and its
characteris