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"Sam looked at his friend for a moment, and then burst out laughing. 'Give me your hand, he cried. 'I'm mighty glad you've got Susan Shellbark, and I'm mighty glad you went to Thompsontown. "'So am I, said Captain Abner. 'If I hadn't gone to Thompsontown I'd never have got Susan Shellbark. "'That's so, cried Sam.
In his extremity he was ready to risk making a bid for the hire of a blacksmith's aid to rid himself of his bonds, but not a blacksmith who wore a deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders. He caught himself scraping his wrists up and down again against the rough, scrofulous trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation was comforting to the swollen skin.
It is always a stately and elegant tree and very valuable for its timber. There are several varieties, which are much alike, the principal difference being in the nuts. You have all seen most of the trees and gathered the nuts. They are: "1. The shellbark, with five large leaflets, a large nut, of which the husk is deeply grooved at the seams, and a rough, scaly trunk.
We of the cold North, as we crack the toothsome pecan, hardly realize its kinship with the hickory. It is full brother to our shellbark, which is, according to botany, Hicoria ovata, while the Southern tree is Hicoria pecan. A superb tree it is, too, reaching up amid its vigorous associates of the forests of Georgia, Alabama and Texas to a height exceeding one hundred and fifty feet.
"'Oh, that's all right, said Captain Abner; 'they're both to go on to the mantelpiece, one on one end, and t'other on the other. That's to be the way with everything we've got. You've knowed Susan Shellbark as long as I have, Sam, and you know she'll stick to that bargain. "'That's so, said Sam; 'she'll stick to that bargain.
The boys took good care to remove every trace of their presence from the bar, and to deftly rearrange the screen of bushes after passing through. The tent was soon staked under the shellbark trees, and the canoes were carried out beside it. The Jolly Rovers now felt as safe as though they were fifty miles down the creek.
It is called the mockernut because while the nut is large, usually larger than the shellbark, the kernel is very small and difficult to take out of the thick shell. =Pignut= I will italicize the pignut because, though I have never eaten it, I once tried to, and the first taste was all-sufficient. Some writers tell us that the flavor is sweet or slightly bitter.
The character of the original forests is determined much by the lime-content, and the practical man, when buying a farm, rates its productive power by the kinds of timber it has produced. The black walnut, ash, shellbark hickory, black and white oak, sturdily grown, evidence a soil rich in lime, while the pines, small blackjack and post oaks, and the chestnut are at home in non-calcareous soils.
The bitternut, with seven, nine or eleven small, narrow, serrated leaves, small fruit with long, prominent seams, bitter and thin-shelled nuts and very yellow buds. "The shellbark is often called 'shagbark, and it is the finest of the hickories and one that is seldom mistaken for any of the others.
The nuts grow in small clusters as a rule, often in pairs, and the outer husk separates when ripe into four pieces, allowing the nut to drop out clean and dry. The full-grown tree is of good size and is found almost everywhere in the United States. =Shellbark. Shagbark= The shellbark or shagbark hickory-nut is one of the best. The flavor, as every one knows, is sweet and pleasant.
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