460 



Garden and Forest. 



[September 25, 



take up the equally appropriate Hicorius of Rafinesque, for 

 there can hardly be a question that the name should be writ- 

 ten as Rafinesque wrote it when he defined the characters 

 of his genus, and that an earlier generic name without 

 characters cannot be considered. I propose, therefore, to 

 follow in the main, with the substitution of Hicorius for 

 Hicoria, the nomenclature which has been carefully elabo- 

 rated for this genus by Dr. Britton (/. c), although the 

 rejection of Hicoria will add another to the heavy load of 

 synonyms with which these trees are encumbered. 



241. Cary.v OLiv.EKORMis, Nutt. , wiU become Hicorius 

 Pecan, Marshall's specific name (Arbustum Americanum 

 published in 1785), Pecan being the first published and four 

 years older than Wangenheim's (Amer. 54, t. 18. f. 43) 

 Juglans lUinoiiiensis. 



242. Carya alba, Nutt., becomes Hicorius ovaius. The 

 different species of Hickory were not distinguished by 

 Linna?us, but his herbarium shows that the tree which it 

 has become the habit to call Carya iomentosa was really 

 what he meant hjYi'is Juglans alba, and that the oldest post- 

 Linnoean specific name for the Shell-bark is that of Miller 

 (Dictionary ed. 8. 1768) Juglaiis ovaia. 



Carya viicrocarpa of Nuttall was considered in the 

 Census Catalogue a synonym of C. alba. This was 

 probably a mistake, but there s-till exist doubts about the 

 true position of this tree to be cleared up. Dr. Britton 

 (/. c.) would retain the Nuttallian species and places his 

 Hicoria microcarpa, in a section with the Pig-nut. His 

 specimens gathered on Staten Island, where this tree is not 

 rare, seem to me to belong to a not uncommon form of the 

 Pig-nut with small compressed globular nuts, which were 

 familiar to the younger Michaux (Silva, i, 196, t. 38) and 

 to Emerson (Trees and Shrubs of ]Massachussetts 198). 

 But it is not quite clear that it was this small round nut that 

 Nuttall had in mind when he wrote the characters of his 

 Carya microcarpa. He described the nut as " partly quad- 

 rangular;" and in the figure in his Silva, the exocarp is 

 represented as thick, while the nut although small is 

 strongly four-angled like a Mocker-nut, as his description, 

 "nuce subglobosa subquadrangulata", implies, as does the 

 following sentence, " by the leaves it appears to be allied 

 to C. glabra, but the nut on a small scale, is that of C. 

 i07jieniosa, or the common Hickory." Some further investi- 

 gation of the Pig-nut group of our Hickories made in the 

 field, especially in the neighborhood of Philadelphia where 

 Nuttall found his tree, is desirable, and necessary to clear 

 up the doubtful points of their specific limitations. It was 

 this small fruited Hickory that Marshall described as Juglans 

 alba odoraia in the "Arbustum Americanum" as Nuttall 

 has pointed out in the Silva. So that if it is found that the 

 species must be kept up, the name for it would appear to 

 be Hicorius odoralus. 



243. Carya sulcata, Nutt., becomes Hicorius sulcaius. 



244. Carya tomentosa, Nutt, becomes Hicorius albus. 



245. Carya porcina, Nutt, becomes Hicorius glaber, 

 this species having been first described as Juglans glabra. 



246. Carya amara, Nutt., becomes Hicorius minimus., 

 this species having been distinguished first by Marshall 

 (Arbustum Americanum) as Juglans alba minima. 



247. Carya JiYRisxiCiEFORMis, Nutt., becomes Hicorius 

 niyrisiiccejormis. 



The Nutmeg Hickory was discovered west of the Mis- 

 sissippi River much earlier than has been generally sup- 

 posed. A specimen preserved in the Torrey Herbarium of 

 Columbia College shows that Fremont on his third expedi- 

 tion found it at Camp 24, "near the Creek," on the 3d of 

 July, 1845. The known range of this species was greatly 

 extended last year by Mr. Pringle, who found a few trees 

 in one of the cafions of the Sierra Madre in the vicinity of 

 Monterey, Mexico. 



248. Carya aquatica. Nutt, becomes Hicorius aqualicus. 



C. S. Sargent. 



The Shell-bark Hickory. 



^TT^HE Hickory is purely an American tree. The eight 

 J_ species which are known all belong to the southern 

 half of the North American continent, with the headquar- 

 ters of the genus, as represented by the greatest number of 

 species in any one locality, in the valley of the Red River, 

 in Arkansas, with one species pushing far south along the 

 Mexican Sierra Madre. No other country or region of the 

 earth can boast of an indigenous Hickory-tree, although it 

 is quite within the bounds of possibility that one, and per- 

 haps several species may still be found in the unexplored 

 mountain districts of central China, so similar are the floras 

 of our eastern states and of eastern Asia in actual compo- 

 sition, and so closely related in their descent from remote 

 common ancestors. The Hickories, at least some of the 

 species, are among the most valuable trees in the world. 

 There has never been a boy or girl brought up in any 

 part of the country east of the Missouri River who 

 has not early learned the value of the pecan, or the 

 hickory-nut, or the mocker-nut ; and the wood which 

 some of these trees yield has no equal, and certainly no 

 superior, for certain purposes. There is no wood at 

 once so tough and strong and true. It is the Hickory- 

 wood in its handle which has carried the American axe 

 round the world, driving, wherever it is known, all other 

 axes out of the market ; and it has made possible those 

 light carriages, which in turn have made possible the 

 American trotting horse, one of the marvels of these mod- 

 ern times, and probably the best example of what can be 

 accomplished, by careful breeding and persistent selection, 

 in the development of domestic animals for a .special 

 purpose. No other tree is known whose wood is tough 

 enough and strong enough to stand the strain imposed 

 upon the American trotting-sulky, and without the modern 

 sulky and its heavier forerunner, neither breeding nor train- 

 ing could have produced that race of horses which every 

 American looks upon in his heart of hearts with joy and 

 admiration. As a nation we owe much to the Hickory- 

 tree, and we have good and just reason for being proud of 

 it It is a tree known to many people ; next to the Oak 

 and the Pine, more Americans know the Plickory-tree when 

 they see it than any other of our trees. That is, they know, 

 generally, the Hickory, without distinguishing the different 

 species, which is hardly surprising, since botanists them- 

 selves are often perplexed over questions concerning the 

 proper limitations of these species. Nor are these ques- 

 tions ever likely to be settled quite satisfactorily, for it is 

 probable that several of the species are inclined to hybrid- 

 ize one with another and so produce those individuals of 

 doubtful characters which are the despair of people who 

 expect to be able to fit exactly every plant they encounter 

 with the printed description of it in some book. 



The Shell-bark Hickory is considered, generally, the most 

 valuable of the genus. The nuts, of course, are not es- 

 teemed as highly as pecans, and they are, prehaps, rather 

 inferior to and considerably smaller than those of a western 

 representatiA'^e of the genus, {Hickorius sulcahcs), the 

 wood of which is equal to that of the Shell-bark. Still, the 

 Shell-bark, perhaps, is the tree which people' have in mind, 

 generally, when they think or speak of a Hickory-tree ; and 

 the peculiarity of the bark which separates into great thick, 

 loose scales, gives to this tree a distinctive appearance 

 which makes it easily known and recognized. 



The Shell-bark, as it is now seen in the eastern States, 

 is generally an obconical, square-topped tree, with rather 

 small branches, produced low down on the trunk. Such 

 trees have grown generally since the land was first cleared 

 for settlement and agriculture, and there are not now many 

 people living here at the east who, unless they know the 

 forests of the Mississippi Valley, and more especially those 

 found on the higher Alleghany Mountains, have an idea of 

 what a large Hickory-tree is, growing as it grew naturally 

 before the white man disturbed and changed the natural 

 condition of this country. Our illustration of a fine tree in 



