240 EDWARD W. BERRY 



CONCLUSION 



Forestry experts warn us that commercial hickory is growing 

 scarce, just as the black walnut is already scarce. Aside from 

 our enjoyment of their fruits and the very special practical ends 

 which the wood fulfills we should not forget the sentiment which 

 attaches to a family of such magnificent trees, a family with an 

 ancestry, as we have just seen, extending back millions of years 

 to a far off time when the dominant animal population of the 

 globe was the uncouth reptiles of the Cretaceous, a time when 

 the evolution of the mammalia had not yet been wrought out and 

 when man was a far distant promise, not even hinted at in the 

 teeming life of that age. While we can never hope to bring back 

 the primeval forests of our ancestors we can use the intelligence 

 which has been so slowly acquired through the ages in conserving 

 these magnificent tree relics of bygone ages. 



