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."