PALE-LEAF HICKORY (_Hicoria villosa_) is a small tree but large enough to be useful wherever it exists in sufficient quantity. The largest specimens attain a height of fifty feet and a diameter of eighteen inches. The tree bears nuts when very small, and the kernel is sweet. The bark of this hickory is rough but not shaggy. The range extends from New Jersey to Florida and west to Missouri and Texas. It is most abundant in the lower Appalachian ranges. The wood possesses the common characteristics of the hickories, and it is cut with them wherever it is found, but is seldom or never reported separately in lumber operations. SMALL PIGNUT HICKORY (_Hicoria odorata_) is considered a species by some botanists while others regard it as a variety. It is called small pignut in Maryland, and occasionally little shagbark. This last name refers to the roughness of the bark which resembles the bark of elm. The range of the tree extends from Massachusetts to Missouri and south to the Ohio and the Potomac rivers. The wood differs little from that of pignut hickory, and the uses are the same. No distinction is made between them at the shop and factory. This tree is by some botanists believed to be a hybrid between shagbark and pignut. It is sometimes called false shagbark. The nut is edible. [Illustration] BUTTERNUT [Illustration: BUTTERNUT] BUTTERNUT (_Juglans Cinerea_) This tree is known as butternut or as white walnut in all parts of its range. Butternut is in reference to the oily kernel of the nuts, and white walnut is the name given by those who would distinguish the tree from black walnut. Persons acquainted with one of the species in its native woods are usually sure to be acquainted with the other, for their ranges are practically co-extensive, except that black walnut extends farther southwest, butternut farther northeast. Butternut grows from New Brunswick to South Dakota, from Delaware to Arkansas, and along the Appalachian highlands to northern Georgia and Alabama. Butternut resembles black walnut in a good many ways and differs from it in several. They are very closely related botanically--as closely as are brothers in the same household. Black walnut is larger, stronger, better known, and has always dominated and eclipsed the other in usefulness and public esteem; yet butternut is a tree both useful and interesting. No person acquainted with both would ever mistake one for the other, winter or summer. Botanists tell how to distinguish butternut from black walnut by noting minor differences. The person who is not a botanist needs no such help. He knows them at sight, and there is no possibility of mistaking them.