ON TIMBER TREES 
tinguished as characteristic of the species, and as 
not by any chance having grown on any other 
kind of tree. 
Then, too, if the hickory tree were felled and 
cut into fire wood, the texture and fiber of the 
wood itself enabled anyone who glanced at it to 
pronounce it hickory as definitely and with as 
much certitude as if he had seen the tree while 
living and in full leaf. No other wood had quite 
the same whiteness, quite the same strength and 
elasticity of fiber. 
The Indians had learned this in the old days, 
and had used the hickory of a preference always 
in making their bows. 
We boys, in our barbaric age, followed the 
Indians ’example. We knew that a bow of hickory 
had shooting qualities that no other bow could 
hope to match. 
All in all, then, the hickory, despite the triviali- 
ties of variation which are mentioned in the pre- 
ceding chapter, stands apart when we come to 
scrutinize it comprehensively, as a tree differing 
from all others and obviously entitled to stand as 
a unified and differentiated species. 
And what is true of the hickory is no less true 
of each and every species of tree in our forest. 
Each walnut and oak and beech and birch and 
pine and linden and locust has a thousand points 
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