We can readily imagine what a delicious liquid hickory milk must be in which to cook hominy, rice, and similar kinds of grain; and there would be no danger from tuberculosis in this natural product of the vegetable kingdom. Perhaps at some future day, when milch cows are as rare in this country as they have been for ages in China and Japan, hickory milk will come into vogue again and be more highly valued by our people than it ever was by the aborigines.
While we have no romantic tales to repeat in which either hickory trees or the nuts have played an important part, yet we can well imagine that such delicious food must, in ages past, as well as in our own times, have been a coveted luxury, enjoyed at many a social gathering of friends and neighbors. Many a country boy and girl has welcomed the early autumn frosts, because they announced the opening of the nutting season, reminding them of the long winter evenings near at hand, and that the industrious and nimble squirrel was a sharp competitor in the nutting field; consequently, no time could be wasted if a store of such luxuries was to be gathered for home use, or to be sent to city or village market for the benefit of less fortunate consumers. It is to be hoped that this source of pleasure and profit may continue long after the original forests of our country have disappeared, and through the preservation and planting of the noble food-bearing hickories by the roadsides, in orchards, also for shelter, shade and ornament. Valuable as hickory timber and hickory nuts have always been to the inhabitants of this country, we might reasonably suppose that there would be many thousands of these trees planted every year, in order to keep up a supply and make good the annual loss sustained in the destruction constantly going on in our forests. But no such plantings appear to have been undertaken in our Northern States, and only quite recently in the Southern, where the pecan nut is attracting considerable attention, on account of the increase in demand, and the advance in price obtained for them in the markets. Furthermore, with the many millions of dollars expended by the general government to encourage the planting, preservation and cultivation of forest trees, no special encouragement has been extended to the nut-bearing kinds, and the man who plants a cottonwood or worthless willow is given as much credit as though he planted and reared a tree a thousand times more valuable to himself and the country at large.
This may not be a very creditable phase of nut culture in the United States, but it is history, nevertheless, and to attempt to suppress it would merely be encouraging negligence, which has already become so general that the inferior varieties of hickory nuts command a much higher price in our markets than the very choicest did a few years ago.
The nomenclature of the walnut family has been subjected to various revisions by botanists, during the present century, and there are probably others yet to follow in the near or distant future. In all other standard botanical works published prior to 1817-1818, the hickories were classed with the butternut, black walnut and Persian walnut, and under the generic name of Juglans. But in the year 1818 Mr. Thomas Nuttall, an eminent English botanist, who had given years to wandering through our forests and studying American plants, separated the hickories from the older genus of Juglans, placing them in a new one, to which he gave the name of Carya, from an ancient Greek name of the walnut tree. This classification of Nuttall's was immediately adopted by the botanists of his time, and has been observed, scarcely without question, by the authors of all the numerous botanical works published in America and Europe during the past seventy-five years. But now we are informed by some of our noted botanists that, in deference to the law of priority dominant in matters scientific, Nuttall's name for this genus must be abandoned, inasmuch as Mr. C. S. Rafinesque, an erratic Frenchman possessing considerable ability for botanical research, and who came to this country several years before Nuttall,—as some recent investigations appear to prove,—defined the distinct characteristics of the hickories, and not only proposed, but published the name Hicoria for this genus in 1817, while Nuttall's Carya did not appear until one year later, viz.: 1818. For these dates I am mainly indebted to Dr. N. L. Britton, who appears to have been delving among "first editions" of the works of the authors named (Bulletin, Torrey Botanical Club, 1888).
It seems strange, however, at this late date, that such eminent botanists as the late Dr. John Torrey and Dr. Asa Gray, who were both intimately acquainted with, in fact associates of, Rafinesque, should have ignored his rights in regard to the name of Hicoria, if he was really entitled to the honor of founding this genus and separating the hickories from the Juglans. But for some good reason they left the matter in abeyance, for their successors to settle. Dr. Torrey does, in a way, recognize Rafinesque, in his "Catalogue of Plants Within Thirty Miles of the City of New York," published in 1819, but in a manner which shows that he had no confidence in Rafinesque's claim, but did approve of Nuttall's classifications and name of Carya, for on page 74 he refers to the hickories as follows: "Carya, Nuttall; Hickoria, Rafinesque."
From this it appears that Dr. Torrey did not adopt Hicoria as the proper mode of spelling this word, but retained the letter k in giving it a Latin form. This is not strange, inasmuch as Rafinesque had no settled form of his own, and varied the spelling at different times; as, for instance, Scoria, Hicoria, Hickorius and Hicorius. It is but reasonable to suppose that Dr. Torrey was familiar with Rafinesque's earlier writings, and also whether his proposed generic name of Scoria, in 1808, was legitimate, or a misspelling of Hicoria, as suggested by Dr. Britton. But of one thing we may rest assured, and that is, Dr. Torrey would not knowingly detract from, nor fail to give every man full credit for his labors in any branch of natural history or elsewhere, and he certainly must have known Rafinesque in all his eccentricities and moods, for when in New York city he was usually the guest of Dr. Torrey, and these relations continued for many years.
A few of our leading botanists, having recently decided that Rafinesque's name of Hicoria must be restored, in deference to the laws of priority, and Nuttall's Carya be relegated to the position of a synonym, I have concluded to adopt it in this work, although I am well aware that a large majority of our botanists have protested against this change, probably because of the confusion it is likely to cause in the botanical literature of our times. My own reason for adopting Hicoria is not so much from any special reverence to the laws of priority, but because it is derived from an old American Indian name, and for all such I have a profound regard, and would retain and adopt them whenever and wherever they are at all appropriate to products indigenous to this country. The hickories being purely American, and unknown to Greece or Greeks, a semi-native name is all the more acceptable. It is not to be expected that botanical quibbles are of any special interest to the practical nut culturist, for a pecan or a shellbark hickory will taste just as sweet and command as high a price in market under one scientific name as another; but the cultivator may have occasion to look up the botanical name of his trees in some school botany, or other botanical work, and fail to find it, in the absence of some guide to the various changes that have been made in the name of the genus, as well as in the name of the synonyms of the different species. Then, again, propagators and dealers in trees are prone to employ unfamiliar names, whether they are old or new, this adding to the confusion, without benefit to either purchaser or cultivator.
To assist those who may have occasion to consult these pages for either the common or botanical names of the different species of the hickory, I shall endeavor to give the greater part of those compiled by Prof. C. S. Sargent (Tenth Census), Dr. Britton, and other eminent authorities whose works I have had occasion to consult in writing this treatise. It is not certain, however, that these revisions and readjustments of the scientific names of this genus of trees will remain undisturbed for any considerable number of years, for we have "many men of many minds" at work in the line of botanical research, and it can scarcely be expected that all will reach the same conclusion, either in fact or fancy; besides, it is often difficult, if not wholly impossible, to determine a species from the description given by the earlier botanists, for they are generally very brief and vague, and will often apply equally well to two or more species of the same genus. In some instances not a word is given in the way of description, merely a name, as in "Bartram's Travels" (1791), where he speaks of Juglans exaltata, a tall-growing hickory found in the region through which he was traveling, and we now know that it may have been any one of two or three species indigenous to the Southern States.
Under such confusing circumstances I shall make no claim of infallibility in applying names to species, but attempt no more than my predecessors have in the same direction, and my contemporaries are now attempting, i. e., make as close a guess as possible as to the species or variety of hickory which the earlier authors intended to name and briefly describe. The date of publication of some of the earlier works consulted are given, as an earnest of my desire to assent to the law of priority in such matters.