AMERICAN FOREST TREES 405 



agricultural implements. The uses are nearly the same in Mississippi, 

 but it is used there for rustic seats and other outdoor furniture. In 

 Missouri it is found suitable for cart axles, saddle trees, stitching horse 

 jaws, and wagon beds. In Arkansas it goes with ash into flooring, and 

 interior finish for houses. Illinois builders work it into fixtures for stores. 

 In Michigan it serves the same purposes as in Texas, baskets, boxes, and 

 crates. These examples doubtless are representative of its uses wher- 

 ever the tree is found in commercial quantities. The word is not 

 durable in contact with the soil. It is also liable to attack by boruig 

 insects if logs are allowed to retain their bark. 



The hackberry has been planted to a small extent as a street tree 

 in the southern towns, but it is not as popular as the elms and oaks. It 

 will never occupy a more important position in the country's lumber 

 industry than it holds at present. It is a tree which, for some reason, 

 inspires little enthusiasm in anybody; but nature takes care of it fairly 

 well, and the small sweet drupes which it bears are a guarantee that the 

 species will not want for seed carriers as long as birds continue to have 

 access to its branches in winter. 



SUGARBERRY (Celtis mississippiensis) is frequently mistaken for 

 hackberry even by persons who ought to be able to distinguish them. 

 Botanists formerly confused the two, and probably some insist still that 

 sugarberry is only a variety of hackberry. The leaves generally have 

 smooth margins, and that would differentiate the tree from the hack- 

 berry were it not that sometimes the sugarberry has serrate leaves. The 

 drupes are bright orange red and are usually smaller than the purple 

 fruit of hackberry. As for the wood of the two species, it is not easy 

 to tell one from the other. The sugarberry's range is not one-third as 

 extensive as hackberry's, but covers some hundreds of thousands of 

 square miles in the southeastern quarter of the United States. 

 Its northern limit is in Illinois and Indiana where it occupies rich 

 bottom lands and the banks of streams. It reaches its largest size in 

 the lower Ohio river basin, grows southward into Florida and west 

 into Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. It crosses the Rio Grande 

 into Mexico, appearing to outstrip the hackberry in that direction. 

 It outstrips it in another direction also, for it is found in the Ber- 

 muda islands. The French of Louisiana called it bols inconnu, or the 

 unknown wood. 



This tree shows a marked tendency to run into varieties, and 

 cultivation would probably develop the tendency. The differences 

 between the species and the varieties are plain enough to the systematic 

 botanist, but are such that the lumberman or other ordinary observer 

 would scarcely notice them. The variety which has been named 



