HICKORIES.
Two species of the hickory genus produce nuts of fine quality in the woods, and are beginning to be improved by cultivation and seed selection. They are the shagbark, or shellbark, of the north ern states, and the pecan of the South. Both are handsome shade trees and produce exceptionally good lumber.
The Indians used the nuts of these trees as food, collecting stores of them for winter each autumn, despite the protests of the squirrels.
The early Virginians, imitating the patient squaws, pounded the nuts, shells, and kernels together, in a mortar, then strained out, after boiling in plenty of water, the rich "hickory milk," to which they added cornmeal, and then baked, on hot stones or in ovens, cakes fit for a king. Oil pressed from
the kernels they found the equal of olive oil, a luxury seldom seen in the New World then.
The pecan is a long, pointed nut, with a much crumpled kernel in an astringent, corky, red wrapping, under a thin, smooth shell. Improve ment by selection is reducing the thickness of both coverings, increasing the size and plumpness of the kernel, and the productiveness of the tree. Though many plantations of pecans have been made, and the crop is certainly a paying one, the great bulk of the pecans are still gathered in the woods. The meats sell at sixty to seventy-five cents per pound.