HICKORY NUTS. 149 



milch cows are as rare in this country as they have been 

 for ages in China and Japan, hickory milk will come 

 into vogue again and be more highly valued by our peo- 

 ple than it ever was by the aborigines. 



While we have no romantic tales to repeat in which 

 either hickory trees or the nuts have played an important 

 part, yet we can well imagine that such delicious food 

 must, in ages past, as well as in our own times, have 

 been a coveted luxury, enjoyed at many a social gathering 

 of friends and neighbors. Many a country boy and girl 

 has welcomed the early autumn frosts, because they an- 

 nounced the opening of the nutting season, reminding 

 them of the long winter evenings near at hand, and that 

 the industrious and nimble squirrel was a sharp com- 

 petitor in the nutting field ; consequently, no time could 

 be wasted if a store of such luxuries was to be gathered 

 for home use, or to be sent to city or village market for 

 the benefit of less fortunate consumers. It is to be 

 hoped that this source of pleasure and profit may con- 

 tinue long after the original forests of our country have 

 disappeared, and through the preservation and planting 

 of the noble food-bearing hickories by the roadsides, in 

 orchards, also for shelter, shade and ornament. Valua- 

 ble as hickory timber and hickory nuts have always been 

 to the inhabitants of this country, we might reasonably 

 suppose that there would be many thousands of these 

 trees planted every year, in order fco keep up a supply 

 and make good the annual loss sustained in the destruc- 

 tion constantly going on in our forests. But no such 

 plantings appear to have been undertaken in our North- 

 ern States, and only quite recently in the Southern, 

 where the pecan nut is attracting considerable attention, 

 on account of the increase in demand, and the advance in 

 price obtained for them in the markets. Furthermore, 

 with the many millions of dollars expended by the gen- 

 eral government to encourage the planting, preservation 



