st one place like some birds I know. Would
you, Snowflake?"

Snowflake promptly replied that he wouldn't. Just then Peter discovered
something that he hadn't known before. "My goodness," he exclaimed,
"what a long claw you have on each hind toe!"

It was true. Each hind claw was about twice as long as any other claw.
Peter couldn't see any special use for it and he was just about to ask
more about it when Wanderer suddenly spied a flock of his relatives
some distance away and flew to join them. Probably this saved him some
embarrassment, for it is doubtful if he himself knew why Old Mother
Nature had given him such long hind claws.

CHAPTER XLII. Peter Learns Something About Spooky.

Peter Rabbit likes winter. At least he doesn't mind it so very much,
even though he has to really work for a living. Perhaps it is a good
thing that he does, for he might grow too fat to keep out of the way of
Reddy Fox. You see when the snow is deep Peter is forced to eat whatever
he can, and very often there isn't much of anything for him but the bark
of young trees. It is at such times that Peter gets into mischief, for
there is no bark he likes better than that of young fruit trees. Now
you know what happens when the bark is taken off all the way around the
trunk of a tree. That tree dies. It dies for the simple reason that it
is up the inner layer of bark that the life-giving sap travels in the
spring and summer. Of course, when a strip of bark has been taken off
all the way around near the base of a tree, the sap cannot go up and the
tree must die.

Now up near the Old Orchard Farmer Brown had set out a young orchard.
Peter knew all about that young orchard, for he had visited it many
times in the summer. Then there had been plenty of sweet clover and
other green things to eat, and Peter had never been so much as tempted
to sample the bark of those young trees. But now things were very
different, and it was very seldom that Peter knew what it was to have a
full stomach. He kept thinking of that young orchard. He knew that if he
were wise he would keep away from there. But the more he thought of it
the more it seemed to him that he just must have some of that tender
young bark. So just at dusk one evening, Peter started for the young
orchard.

Peter got there in safety and his eyes sparkled as he hopped over to
the nearest young tree. But when he reached it, Peter had a dreadful
disappointment. All around the trunk of that y