THICK SHELLBARK HICKORY. 
85 
tion should induce proprietors in the Western country, in clearing their 
new lands, to spare the true Shellbark Hickory in preference, when both 
species are found upon the same soil. For the same reason, and for its 
favorable growth in less fertile grounds, and even in elevated situations, a 
fact which I have observed near Brownsville on the Monongahela river, the 
same preference should, I think, be given to it in the forests of Europe. 
In the description of the Scalybark Hickories, it has been seen, that they 
exhibit many striking traits of resemblance, which may warrant the group- 
ing of them into a secondary section. Beside their generic and specific 
characters, they possess others peculiar to themselves, by which they are 
so nearly related, that were it not for some remarkable differences, they 
might be treated as a single species. The general characters of the Hick- 
ories are, three-clefted, pliable, and pendulous male aments, and certain 
common properties of the wood. To these are added, in the Scaly Hick- 
ories, a very thick husk covering the nut completely, and divided into four 
parts when ripe ; a shaggy bark on the trunk, indicated, in my opinion, by 
the external scales of the buds not adhering to those beneath ; and leaves 
composed of very large leaflets of a uniform shape and texture. In com- 
paring the three species with each other, essential differences are observed. 
The Shellbark Hickory, for instance, and the Juglans ambigua are con- 
stantly distinguished by the number of leaflets, which is always 5 in the 
first species and 9 in the last. The nuts and the entire fruit, on the other 
hand, are so much alike, that they might be mistaken for the product of 
the same tree ; the fruit of both is round, with depressed seams, and the 
nuts are similarly moulded and equally white. If, on a more attentive 
examination, the Gloucester Hickory is determined to be a distinct species 
from the Thick Shellbark Hickory, it will be observed that they resemble 
each other in their leaves, composed of 7 and sometimes of 9 leaflets, and 
in the luxuriant force of their vegetation ; but that they differ in their fruit, 
which in the Thick Shellbark Hickory is oblong, with a compressed nut, 
like that of the Shellbark Hickory, of twice the size, and of a yellowish 
color, and in the Gloucester Hickory spherical and very large, with a large 
grayish white nut, nearly round, whose shell is 2 lines thick and extremely 
hard. In fine, it is to be remarked, that the species and the variety of the 
Scalybark Hickory which have been described, grow, or at least are most 
abundantly multiplied, in regions far remote from each other. 
PLATE XXXVII. 
A leaf of one third of its natural size. Fig. 1, A section of the husk. Fig. 
2, Nuts. 
