HICKORY-NUTS AND BUTTERNUTS. 437 



still harder to bore a hole through with teeth or hill, as any one may 

 easily convince himself by trying to perform the feat with his own 

 canines, or even with the point of his sharp pocket-knife. The wal- 

 nut, in fact, is one of the hickory tribe, left behind in Europe and 

 Western Asia ; it ranges through Greece and Asia Minor, Lebanon 

 and Persia, as far east as Cashmere ; and never compelled by circum- 

 stances to acquire the very hard and stony coats of some among its 

 American cousins. 



In the New World, however, the walnut family has been driven by 

 its pressing animal foes to adopt far more vigorous and active defen- 

 sive tactics. The great American forests are the very paradise of 

 endless hungry nut-eaters, from the common gray squirrel, the flying- 

 squirrels, and the numerous other greedy rodents of the Northern 

 plains, to the screaming parrots and powerful-billed monkeys of the 

 tropical South American jungles. Where enemies are so numerous 

 and so persistent, only the very hardest and best-protected nuts of all 

 can survive ; and so the nearest American representative of the Eu- 

 ropean walnut is the butternut of Canada and the Northern States — 

 a far more formidable and uncompromising mouthful to tackle than 

 its easy-going Old World cousin. The outer husk of the butternut 

 resembles pretty well that of the walnut ; but its very stony shell is 

 extremely difficult either to pierce or crack ; the sharp ridges on its 

 surface are naturally very baffling to the teeth of squirrels ; and even 

 when you have at last made a good hole in it, the inside can hardly 

 be extracted in pieces of any bigness, because of the homy intervening 

 ridges. This American walnut, in fact, is a far 'cuter and smarter 

 form of seed-vessel than its effete European relative. There is every 

 reason to believe, indeed, that the butternut is an advanced and im- 

 proved descendant of the same primitive geological ancestor as the 

 Greek walnut. Only, while the walnut has been standing still in pen- 

 insular Greece and Anatolia for innumerable generations, the butter- 

 nut has been going ahead with true American impetuosity, inventing 

 one new improvement or modification after another, till it has now at- 

 tained to almost absolute perfection in its adaptation to its own pecul- 

 iar walk in life. 



Most of the American walnut kind, however, it must be candidly 

 confessed, have not proceeded along the path of progress quite so 

 quickly or so fully as the go-ahead and truly Yankee butternut. The 

 majority of the best-known forms, such as the hickory, the bitter-nut, 

 and pecan -nut, belong to the specially American group known as 

 CaryaSj with fruits usually smaller and less rich than the regular Eu- 

 ropean walnuts. Even among this restricted group, however, there 

 are some very instructive and interesting differences. For example, 

 the true hickory-nut has a sweet and pleasant kernel, which makes it 

 a great favorite with squirrels and boys. To protect itself against 

 aggression, therefore, on the part of its four-footed foes — as to the 



