AMERICAN FOREST TREES 363 



a villager's standby. It can be said to the credit of the pioneers, how- 

 ever, that they knew its value for certain purposes, and employed as 

 much of it as they needed. 



Fuel was the most important place for hickory on the farm. All 

 things considered, it is probably the best firewood of the American 

 forest. The yawning fireplaces called for cords of wood every month of 

 winter hi the northern states. Enough to make a modern buggy would 

 go up the chimney in a rich red blaze hi an hour, and no one thought 

 that it was waste; and it was not waste then, because farms had to be 

 cleared, and firewood was the best use possible for the hickory at that 

 time. Every cord burned in the chimney was that much less to be 

 rolled into logheaps and consumed in the clearing for the new cornfield. 



Hickory has always been considered the best material for smoking 

 meat. More than 30,000 cords a year are now used that way. It was so 

 used in early times, when every farmer smoked and packed his own meat. 

 Hickory smoke was supposed to give bacon a flavor equalled by no other 

 wood; and in addition to that it was believed to keep the skippers out. 



The nuts were made into oil which was thought to be efficacious as a 

 liniment employed as a remedy against rheumatism to which pioneers 

 were susceptible because then- moccasins were porous and then- feet 

 were often wet. The oil was used also for illuminating purposes. It 

 fed the flame of a crude lamp. 



No other wood equalled hickory for "split brooms," the kind that 

 swept the cabins before broom corn was known or carpet sweepers and 

 vacuum cleaners were invented. The toughness, smoothness, and 

 strength of hickory made it the best oxbow wood, and the same property 

 fitted it for barrel hoops. Thousands of fish casks in New England and 

 tobacco hogshead in Maryland and Virginia were hooped with hickory 

 before George Washington was born. The wood's value for ax handles 

 was learned early. The Indians used it for the long, slender handles of 

 their stone hammers with which they barked trees in their clearings, and 

 broke the skulls of enemies in war. 



Bitternut hickory has about ninety-two per cent of the strength 

 of shagbark, and seventy-three per cent of its stiffness. It yields con- 

 siderably more ash when burned, and is rated a little lower in fuel value. 



MOCKER NUT HICKORY (Hicoria alba) has many names. It is called mocker 

 nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Alabama. 

 Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart 

 hickory, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, 

 Illinois, Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory, Texas, 

 Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory, Florida; hard back hickory, 

 Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania, South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; 

 hognut, Delaware. The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell and 



