"What a perfect chest the chestnut is packed in! With such wonderful care Nature has secluded and defended these 'nuts as if they were her most precious fruits, while diamonds are left to take care of themselves. First, it bristles all over with sharp, green prickles, some nearly a half inch long, like a hedgehog rolled into a ball; these rest on a thick, stiff, barklike rind one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch thick, which again is most daintily lined with a kind of silvery fur or velvet plush one-sixteenth of an inch thick, even rising into a ridge between the nuts, like the lining of a casket in which the most precious commodities are kept. At last frost comes to unlock this chest; it alone holds the true key; and then Nature drops to the rustling leaves a 'done' nut, prepared to begin a chestnut's course again. Within itself again each individual nut is lined with a reddish velvet, as if to preserve the seed from jar and injury in falling, and perchance from sudden damp and cold; and within that a thin, white skin envelops the germ. Thus, it has lining within lining and unwearied care, not to count closely, six coverings at least before you reach the contents."

The red squirrels, as if to show their spite because of the protection of this treasure chest, have the reprehensible habit of cutting off the young burs and thus robbing themselves of a rich later harvest—which serves them right. There are usually two nuts in each bur, set with flat sides together; but sometimes there are three and then the middle one is squeezed so that it has two flat sides. Occasionally there is only one nut developed in a bur—an only child, so well cared for that it grows to be almost globular. The color we call chestnut is derived from the beautiful red-brown of the polished shell of the nut, polished except where the base joins the bur, and the apex which is gray and downy.

The chestnut is always a beautiful tree, whether green in summer or glowing golden yellow in autumn; but it is most beautiful during late June and July, when covered with constellations of pale yellow stars. Each of these stars is a rosette of the pollen-bearing blossoms; each ray consists of a catkin often six or eight inches in length, looking like a thread of yellowish chenille fringe; clothing this thread in tufts for its whole length are the stamens, standing out like minute threads tipped with tiny anther balls. If we observe the blossom early enough, we can see these stamens curled up as they come forth from the tiny, pale yellow, six-lobed calyx. One calyx, although scarcely one-sixteenth of an inch across, develops from ten to twenty of these stamens: these tiny flowers are arranged in knots along the central thread of the catkin. No wonder it looks like chenille! There are often as many as thirty of these catkin rays in the star rosette; the lower ones come from the axils of the leaves; but toward the tips of the twig, the leaves are ignored and the catkins have possession. In one catkin I estimated that there were approximately 2,500 stamens developed, each anther packed with pollen. When we think that there may be thirty of the catkins in a blossom-star, we get a glimmering of the amount of pollen produced.

And what is all this pollen for? Can it be simply to fertilize the three or four inconspicuous flowers at the tip of the twig beyond and at the center of the star? These pistillate flowers are little bunches of green scales with some short, white threads projecting from their centers; and beyond them a skimpy continuation of the stem with more little green bunches scattered along it, which are undeveloped pistillate blossoms. The one or two flowers at the base of the stem get all the nourishment and the others do not develop. If we examine one of these nests of green scales, we find that there are six threads belonging to one tiny, green flower with a six-lobed calyx; the six threads are the stigmas, each one reaching out and asking for no more than one grain of the rich shower of pollen.

Chestnut wood is light, rather soft, stiff, coarse and not strong. It is used in cabinet work, cooperage, for telegraph poles and railway ties. When burned as fuel, it snaps and crackles almost equal to hemlock.