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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