THERE ARE BITTER NUTS AND SWEET ONES
How splendid it was in the October woods. Some of the trees were almost bare, some of them were a fine russet brown, and some were all crimson and gold; and the gold was so beautiful against the blue sky that it seemed to Davy and Prue that October, after all, might be the very best month of the year.
There was a brook that wound through the woods. On both sides of it were bottom lands, and here the hickory and walnut and butternut trees grew. Near the hillsides there were groves of hazel with their brown clusters, half opened by the frost, ripe for gathering. Camp was made near the brook, and then all hurried to the nut-trees; the children kicking their feet through the rustling leaves that covered the ground. The Chief Gardener found quite a large section of a young tree which he put on his shoulder for a battering-ram. Then he walked several steps, and butted one end of it against a tall hickory-tree, and down showered the nuts, clattering in the leaves—the hulls bursting and flying in all directions.
Then how the children scrambled and gathered.
"Let's clear the leaves away first, next time," said Davy, "so they will be easier to find."
And this they did, and so they went from tree to tree, gathering hickory-nuts, large and small, and walnuts, butternuts, and chestnuts, and these they emptied into sacks they had brought in the little wagon that was not hitched far away.
By and by, Davy spied a patch of hazel, and each with a basket, Prue and he gathered until they were tired, and it was lunch-time.
How very hungry they were! Is there really anything like nutting to make a little boy and girl hungry? And there was plenty of luncheon, this time. Davy ate until he did not care to get up right away, but was glad to lean back against a tree, and talk, while the Chief Gardener smoked and little Prue and big Prue put away the things, and hulled some of the hazelnuts, which little Prue said seemed to be more hulls than nuts, for there was only about enough to cover the bottom of one basket when they were all hulled.
"What makes all the nuts have such big, thick hulls, anyway?" she asked, as she tried to pound open a thorny chestnut-bur.
"I think the hulls must be to protect the young nuts from birds and squirrels," answered her mother. "The trees do not like to have them carried off until they are quite ripe, so they hold them very tight and enclose them in a very tough shell, and the shell is very bad-tasting, too. But when the nuts are ripe and sweet they let go of them very easily, just as other seeds are dropped, and the hulls open and the harvest is ready for whoever may come to gather it."
The Chief Gardener picked up a hickory-nut from one of the baskets.
"You see, we are eating flower-pistils all the time," he said.
"Are we? I don't believe I ever thought about that," said Davy.
THREE MEMBERS OF THE ACORN FAMILY
The Chief Gardener pointed to the little black tip on the top of the nut.
"That was once the stigma," he said. "You see, it is quite like one, even now. Of course, it was soft then, and the pistil below was soft, too. Then as it grew it became harder and harder until the shell formed, and it was really a nut. The calyx hardened, and made the hull. The pistil and the calyx of a flower are the parts that last longest, but the stamens and the corolla are just as useful in their way. They form a separate flower on the nut-trees. We will have to come to the woods next spring when they are in bloom."
"Papa, don't hazelnuts and chestnuts belong to the same family?" asked little Prue, who had some of each in her chubby hands.
"Why, yes, but why did you think so, Prue?"
"Well, you see, they both have those white spots on them, and I thought mebbe it was a kind of family mark."
"Wise little head, Prue. And now what else is there that has the family mark—we might call it the family seal?"
The children were silent a moment, thinking. They were sitting under a big oak tree, and all at once Davy's eye caught something in the leaves, just by his hand.
"This!" he shouted, and held up an acorn.
"Right you are, Davy boy! The nut that stands at the head of the family. Few acorns are fit to be eaten, except by animals, but you see how round and perfect the family seal is, and though the acorn-cup is nothing like the chestnut-bur, or the husk of the hazel, it perhaps would be, if the green acorn itself was not so bitter that it does not need any other protection. The oak is one of the finest and most useful of all trees, and the hazel and chestnut and beech are probably very proud of belonging to the Oak family."
"And how about hickory and walnuts?" asked Davy.
"They are in a family together—the Walnut family. There are three kinds of walnuts—the English walnuts, the butternuts, and these. There are as many as half a dozen kinds of hickory nuts, and some of them are as bitter as the bitterest acorns."
"Pignuts—I know those," said Davy. "They're awful. I tried to eat some last year."
"You gave me one, too," said Prue. "I don't think that was very nice of you."
Davy blushed and grinned, as he recollected the round, puckered face of little Prue, after she had tasted the bitter nut.
"Never mind, Prue; we'll give him a mock-orange some day," said her mother.
"The pecan is a hickory-nut, too," said the Chief Gardener, "a nut that has left all its bitterness in the shell."
"Davy is a pecan-nut," said little Prue. "He's just bad outside."
Then the little party made ready to go home. They had a good way to drive, and it grows chilly on October evenings. How still it seemed to have grown in the woods when they were ready to go. A squirrel scrambled up a hickory-tree, and sat chattering at them as they drove away.
"He is scolding us for carrying off his winter food," said big Prue. "Oh, let's leave him some!" said little Prue, the tender-hearted.
"Pshaw!" said Davy. "There are enough nuts in these woods to feed all the squirrels in the world."
III