Most of the hickories form fine-looking noble trees of from 60 to 90 ft. in height, with straight, symmetrical trunks, well-balanced ample heads, and bold, handsome, pinnated foliage. When confined in the forest they shoot up 50 to 60 ft. without branches, but when standing alone they expand into a fine head, and produce a lofty round-headed pyramid of foliage. They have all the qualities necessary to constitute fine graceful park trees. The most ornamental of the species are C. olivaeformis, C. alba and C. porcina, the last two also producing delicious nuts, and being worthy of cultivation for their fruit alone.
| Fig. 2.—1, Fruit of Carya alba; 2, Hickory Nut; 3, Cross Section of Nut; 4, Vertical Section of the Seed. |
The husk of the hickory nut, as already stated, breaks up into four equal valves or separates into four equal portions in the upper part, while the nut itself is tolerably even on the surface, but has four or more blunt angles in its transverse outline. The hickory nuts of the American markets are the produce of C. alba, called the shell-bark hickory because of the roughness of its bark, which becomes loosened from the trunk in long scales bending outwards at the extremities and adhering only by the middle. The nuts are much esteemed in all parts of the States, and are exported in considerable quantities to Europe. The pecan-nuts, which come from the Western States, are from 1 in. to 1½ in. long, smooth, cylindrical, pointed at the ends and thin-shelled, with the kernels full, not like those of most of the hickories divided by partitions, and of delicate and agreeable flavour. The thick-shelled fruits of the pig-nut are generally left on the ground for swine, squirrels, &c., to devour. In C. amara the kernel is so bitter that even squirrels refuse to eat it.
HICKS, ELIAS (1748-1830), American Quaker, was born in Hempstead township, Long Island, on the 19th of March 1748. His parents were Friends, but he took little interest in religion until he was about twenty; soon after that time he gave up the carpenter’s trade, to which he had been apprenticed when seventeen, and became a farmer. By 1775 he had “openings leading to the ministry” and was “deeply engaged for the right administration of discipline and order in the church,” and in 1779 he first set out on his itinerant preaching tours between Vermont and Maryland. He attacked slavery, even when preaching in Maryland; wrote Observations on the Slavery of the Africans and their Descendants (1811); and was influential in procuring the passage (in 1817) of the act declaring free after 1827 all negroes born in New York and not freed by the Act of 1799. He died at Jericho, Long Island, on the 27th of February 1830. His preaching was practical rather than doctrinal and he was heartily opposed to any set creed; hence his successful opposition at the Baltimore yearly meeting of 1817 to the proposed creed which would make the Society in America approach the position of the English Friends by definite doctrinal statements. His Doctrinal Epistle (1824) stated his position, and a break ensued in 1827-1828, Hicks’s followers, who call themselves the “Liberal Branch,” being called “Hicksites” by the “Orthodox” party, which they for a time outnumbered. The village of Hicksville, in Nassau County, New York, 15 m. E. of Jamaica, lies in the centre of the Quaker district of Long Island and was named in honour of Elias Hicks.
See A Series of Extemporaneous Discourses ... by Elias Hicks (Philadelphia, 1825); The Journal of the Life and Labors of Elias Hicks (Philadelphia, 1828), and his Letters (Philadelphia, 1834).
HICKS, HENRY (1837-1899), British physician and geologist, was born on the 26th of May 1837 at St David’s, in Pembrokeshire, where his father, Thomas Hicks, was a surgeon. He studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital, London, qualifying as M.R.C.S. in 1862. Returning to his native place he commenced a practice which he continued until 1871, when he removed to Hendon. He then devoted special attention to mental diseases, took the degree of M.D. at St Andrews in 1878, and continued his medical work until the close of his life. In Wales he had been attracted to geology by J. W. Salter (then palaeontologist to the Geological Survey), and his leisure time was given to the study of the older rocks and fossils of South Wales. In conjunction with Salter, he established in 1865 the Menevian group (Middle Cambrian) characterized by the trilobite Paradoxides. Subsequently Hicks contributed a series of important papers on the Cambrian and Lower Silurian rocks, and figured and described many new species of fossils. Later he worked at the Pre-Cambrian rocks of St David’s, describing the Dimetian (granitoid rock) and the Pebidian (volcanic series), and his views, though contested, have been generally accepted. At Hendon Dr Hicks gave much attention to the local geology and also to the Pleistocene deposits of the Denbighshire caves. For a few years before his death he had laboured at the Devonian rocks. With his keen eye for fossils he detected organic remains in the Morte slates, previously regarded as unfossiliferous, and these he regarded as including representatives of Lower Devonian and Silurian. His papers were mostly published in the Geol. Mag. and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. He was elected F.R.S. in 1885, and president of the Geological Society of London 1896-1898. He died at Hendon on the 18th of November 1899.
HICKS, WILLIAM (1830-1883), British soldier, entered the Bombay army in 1849, and served through the Indian mutiny, being mentioned in despatches for good conduct at the action of Sitka Ghaut in 1859. In 1861 he became captain, and in the Abyssinian expedition of 1867-68 was a brigade major, being again mentioned in despatches and given a brevet majority. He retired with the honorary rank of colonel in 1880. After the close of the Egyptian war of 1882, he entered the khedive’s service and was made a pasha. Early in 1883 he went to Khartum as chief of the staff of the army there, then commanded by Suliman Niazi Pasha. Camp was formed at Omdurman and a new force of some 8000 fighting men collected—mostly recruited from the fellahin of Arabi’s disbanded troops, sent in chains from Egypt. After a month’s vigorous drilling Hicks led 5000 of his men against an equal force of dervishes in Sennar, whom he defeated, and cleared the country between the towns of Sennar and Khartum of rebels. Relieved of the fear of an immediate attack by the mahdists the Egyptian officials at Khartum intrigued against Hicks, who in July tendered his resignation. This resulted in the dismissal of Suliman Niazi and the appointment of Hicks as commander-in-chief of an expeditionary force to Kordofan with orders to crush the mahdi, who in January 1883 had captured El Obeid, the capital of that province. Hicks, aware of the worthlessness of his force for the purpose contemplated, stated his opinion that it would be best to “wait for Kordofan to settle itself” (telegram of the 5th of August). The Egyptian ministry, however, did not then believe in the power of the mahdi, and the expedition started from Khartum on the 9th of September. It was made up of 7000 infantry, 1000 cavalry and 2000 camp followers and included thirteen Europeans. On the 20th the force left the Nile at Duem and struck inland across the almost waterless wastes of Kordofan for Obeid. On the 5th of November the army, misled by treacherous guides and thirst-stricken, was ambuscaded in dense forest at Kashgil, 30 m. south of Obeid. With the exception of some 300 men the whole force was killed. According to the story of Hicks’s cook, one of the survivors, the general was the last officer to fall, pierced by the spear of the khalifa Mahommed Sherif. After emptying his revolver, the pasha kept his assailants at bay for some time with his sword, a body of Baggara who fled before him being known afterwards as “Baggar Hicks” (the cows driven by Hicks), a play on the words baggara and baggar, the former being the herdsmen and the latter the cows. Hicks’s head was cut off and taken to the mahdi.