1868 ] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
449 
Fig. 3. 
enables the animal to perform all ordinary move¬ 
ments of the body, such as standing erect, -walk¬ 
ing, etc. In front of the cerebrum and in the nat¬ 
ural position of things partly covered by it, are 
the optic-tubercles , d, or the centers governing 
the sense of sight, and in far-seeing animals, 
such as birds, they are comparatively large. 
Lastly, at the top of the spinal cord, and at 
tiie very base of the skull, we have the medulla- 
s oblongata , e, which 
governs the function 
of breathing, the di¬ 
gestion of food, and 
all muscular power. 
All the nerves com¬ 
ing from the muscles 
of the body and 
forming the spinal 
cord have to pass 
through this portion before reaching the other 
parts of the brain. The slightest injury to 
this part oftentimes results in instant death, 
so that it has received the name of the “vital- 
point,” or the “vital-knot.” Experiments have 
shown that all the other parts of the brain ex¬ 
cept this last, the medulla-oblongata, may be 
injured or even removed, without the immediate 
destruction of life, but as soon as this is disturbed, 
breathing at once stops, the heart’s action 
soon ceases, and death is the result. The 
injury the rooster on exhibition has sustained 
seems to be this. The head, or rather the 
face, has been so taken off as to leave behind, 
uninjured, the three last named parts of the 
brain, c, cl , e , which are the ones really essen¬ 
tial to the maintenance of life. If a bird’s head 
be cut in the direction indicated by the dotted 
line, 7i, i, fig. 2, it will only have lost its face and 
the external appendages thereto, and the intel¬ 
lectual part of the brain, the cerebrum, leaving 
behind the parts essential to the life of the ani¬ 
mal. Though apparently headless, there is still 
enough of the brain left to allow the animal to 
perform certain functions, for a while at least. 
Clearing' Woodland. 
In adapting woodland to ornamental purposes, 
and in some other cases, it becomes necessary 
to remove the whole, or a part of the trees. In 
doing this, it is often better to remove the trees 
with the main roots, rather than t,o fell them 
in the usual manner and take the stumps out 
afterwards. The leverage is very great in 
a tall tree, and the stoutest one can be turned 
out with a yoke of cattle. The best tool for 
cutting the large roots of trees is the common 
mattock or grub-axe. It has a long, thin blade, 
with a much narrower cutting edge than the 
common axe, which is of great advantage in cut¬ 
ting roots imbedded in the earth. With this, one 
gives a more powerful blow, and it is less liable to 
get dulled. After the roots are cut, a rope may 
be attached to the tree and hitched directly to the 
yoke, if the tree is small,or passed through a pul¬ 
ley fastened to the ground. The higher up the 
tree the rope is fastened, the greater is the pur¬ 
chase upon the roots. After cutting up, the trees, 
roots and all, can be drawn into heaps, and burn¬ 
ed. Where the wood is so near market as to be 
valuable for timber, there is an additional motive 
for this mode of extracting roots, in the fact 
that with the bole they can be made into ship 
knees. Large quantities of larch and spruce 
knees of this kind are brought from the forests 
of Maine, and sold at good prices to our ship 
builders. Material for ship building is constant¬ 
ly appreciating in value, and knees are now 
sent hundreds of miles to market by water and 
by rail. The knees, if well sold, would often 
pay a good part of the expense of grubbing the 
trees. If the trees are already cut in the ordi¬ 
nary way, with the stump standing, nothing re¬ 
mains but to apply some kind of a stump puller. 
------ » 
Hickory Nuts and Timber. 
The Shagbark Hickory is a favorite tree with 
us and with every northern farmer, so far as we 
know. It is very handsome, and of rather quick 
growth ; the foliage is beautiful in its rich, glow¬ 
ing greenness, and little subject to injury from 
insects, though, with all the rest of our forest 
trees, the hickory is attacked by several. The 
Fig. 1.— HICKORY NUTS. 
tree is perfectly hardy, requiring a good soil, en¬ 
joying moist grounds, yet doing well wherever 
its roots can penetrate to a permanent water 
supply, or int<5 deep loamy or rocky soils, which 
are always somewhat moist. The fruit is the 
most delicious of our native nuts, in the estima¬ 
tion of most people, and the mere mention of 
the wood recalls grateful memories of hearth¬ 
stones, where the genial blaze of the hickory 
logs in the great fire-place was as much a part of 
the winter evening welcome as the cordial hand- 
grasp. The belief is a common one, that the 
days of open wood fires are numbered, and that 
the bright, warm, hickory blaze must give place 
to red-hot anthracite and black stoves. 
We do not entertain such an opinion. 
With only a little painstaking we can 
have hickories enough, which will pay an 
interest on the ground they occupy with 
fruit and shade and beauty, and at last 
give us fuel for our open fires, handles for 
hammers and axes, flails, ox bows, hoop 
poles, spokes for wheels, teeth for rakes, 
and tough, elastic wood for purposes 
wherever these qualities are desirable. 
There is almost as much difference be¬ 
tween the nuts of Shagbark hickories as 
there is between apples. This is not alone in size, 
but in quality—in sweetness, and in the nature 
and thinness of the shells. The character of 
the shell is very important. We all know that 
some nuts crack so that the halves of the irregu¬ 
lar kernel drop out almost or quite whole, or 
are picked out without difficulty. This quality 
is peculiar to nuts of certain trees, and is not al¬ 
together dependent upon the thinness of the 
shells, or the way they are cracked. The good 
qualities seem to be in some degree associated 
with the thickness and size of the outer husk, 
which in the fruit of the Shagbark Hickory 
(Carya alba) falls apart, when ripe, in four seg¬ 
ments, leaving the nut free. The thicker the 
husk, the better the nut usually. Some tliin- 
husked nuts are very sweet, but the shells are 
hard, and the nuts usually small. Hickory 
trees are easily raised from seed ; we think as 
easily as peach trees. The little trees should 
be transplanted in the nursery rows at a year 
old, the tap-roots being cut off, and after this 
they will bear transplanting like other nursery 
stock. Seeds selected from trees bearing re¬ 
markably fine nuts will be very likely to pro¬ 
duce fine fruit, provided the parent trees stand 
isolated from inferior sorts. Cultivation and 
enrichment of the soil have a marked effect on 
the size and abundance of the nuts. 
We have never known of the hickory being 
successfully grafted or budded. It is possible, 
however, to multiply choice trees from the roots. 
Mr. A. S. Fuller assures us he 
has been entirely successful in 
obtaining young trees by bend¬ 
ing up the upper roots, so as to 
bring a portion to the surface, 
and wounding this, which causes 
the formation of shoots upon it. 
These shoots may be cut off from 
the parent tree, and as soon as 
established as independent 
plants, transplanted. We give 
an engraving of the fruit of the 
Shagbark Hickory, fig. 1, and 
in fig. 2, two nuts, one, the small¬ 
er, being the nut of this tree, of 
exact natural size, and somewhat 
above the average of good hicko¬ 
ry nuts. The larger figure is the 
nut of the Thick Shellbark Hick¬ 
ory of the West. It is a decided¬ 
ly larger and coarser nut, of a yellowish-brown 
color ; the shell is exceedingly thick, but the 
nuts in some varieties approach very near in 
excellence to that of the thinner shelled Shag- 
bark. The trees are similar, both in appear¬ 
ance and quality of the wood. The leaves of the 
thick Shellbark Hickory ( Carya sulcata) have, 
however, more frequently 7 or 8 leaflets than 5, 
which is the common number upon the Shag¬ 
bark. Much more attention should be given 
not only to the preservation of the trees already 
existing, but to the propagation of the hickory, 
chestnut, and other trees, valuable for both fruit 
and timber. We believe it is in the power of, 
almost every farmer to have a grove of hickories 
yielding fruit much superior to the common 
hickory nuts of the woods, or of the market, 
and bringing, also, a very much higher price. 
Leaves for Bedding. 
Gardeners who have occasion to make hot¬ 
beds generally appreciate the value of leaves, 
and gather them if they are available. Farmers, 
as a rule, with every facility for gathering them, 
and forests close by, leave them to rot upon the 
ground. They are not, indeed, quite lost there, 
but soil that has had hundreds of crops of leaves 
upon it and is a mass of leaf mold several iach- 
Fig. 2.— SHAGBARK. THICK SHELLBARK. 
