LUTHER BURBANK 



hickory, the variations of which were referred to 

 in the preceding chapter. Attention was called to 

 the fact that the hickories that I used to observe 

 as a boy in the neighborhood of my New England 

 home differed a good deal in size and form, and 

 that the nuts that they bore were sometimes oval, 

 sometimes rounded in form, sometimes rough, 

 sometimes smooth, sometimes thick, and some- 

 times thin of shell, and equally diversified as to 

 the quality of their meat. But of course I should 

 be foremost to admit that all these diversities were 

 in the aggregate of minor significance in compari- 

 son with the characteristics that even the most 

 divergent of the hickories had in common each 

 with all the rest. All of them were trees that 

 attained a fair size as trees go. 



All have roots and trunks and branches of the 

 same general form and aspect as much alike, for 

 example, as the bodies and arms and legs of 

 human beings. 



All of them had leaves that could at once be 

 distinguished as being leaves of the hickory and 

 of no other tree. 



All had bark with the same characteristic whit- 

 ish color and the same propensity to scale off in 

 layers; and although the bark of some was much 

 rougher than that of others, any fragment of bark 

 of any hickory tree could readily enough be dis- 



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