*'^ 



XXT. 



NUTS AND NUTTING. 



In all the hedge-rows and copses of England the 

 nutting season is now in full swing. While the 

 lasses with their wicket baskets are busily picking 

 blackberries for market, or for the dom'3Stic pre- 

 serving-pot, the lads are scrambling up banks at 

 the risk of their necks after Kentish filberts, or 

 flinging stones recklessly at the landlord's trees 

 for the great husky Spanish chestnuts. The 

 filberts are mostly too precious to be eaten by the 

 finders in person — they are sold for the dessert of 

 richer people ; but the common beechnuts have 

 no economical value, as the daily papers put it; 

 thej'' are the natural prize of the small boy who 

 first lights upon them, and they are enjoyed with 

 quite as much gusto by the young discoverer as 

 the daintiest nuts on earth in wealthier house- 

 holds. You have to hunt a good deal before you 

 get your reward in the beechnut industry ; half 

 the husks are empty, or contain only sterile seeds, 

 and it is not more than one or two fruits in .'\ 

 dozen that one can really eat with any internal 



satisfaction. But the taste of boys is easily sat- 



233 



