ON THE HICKORY NUT 



home, and I early learned to distinguish the great 

 difference in the products of the trees, all of which, 

 of course, were natural seedlings. 



Among hundreds of trees there would be 

 scarcely two that hore nuts of precisely the same 

 appearance and quality. 



Some of these hickory nuts were long and 

 slender, with prominent ridges; some were short 

 and compact and smooth in contour; some were 

 very flat and others were nearly globular. The 

 shell varied correspondingly in thickness, and the 

 meat varied greatly in whiteness and in flavor. 



As a boy I knew very well which trees to seek 

 in the fall in order to secure nuts that were plump 

 and thin-shelled, with sweet and delicious meats. 

 It was only after the crop of these trees had been 

 gathered that inferior ones gained attention. 



I knew very well, also, that different trees 

 varied greatly in productiveness, some bearing 

 nuts so abundantly each year that the ground was 

 literally covered when the nuts fell. Others pro- 

 duced nuts very sparingly. 



The trees that thus varied as to their fruit, 

 varied also in form, in size, and in rapidity of 

 growth. In a word, the wild hickories represented 

 numerous varieties that a boy could differentiate, 

 whether or not a botanist might choose to classify 

 them as members of the same species. 



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