MOCKER NUT HICKORY (_Hicoria alba_) has many names. It is called mocker nut in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas; white heart hickory, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, Ontario, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska; black hickory, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri; big bud and red hickory, Florida; hardback hickory, Illinois; white hickory, Pennsylvania, South Carolina; big hickory nut, West Virginia; hognut, Delaware. The name mocker nut is supposed to refer to the thick shell and disappointingly small kernel within. The range is not as extensive as some of the other hickories. Beginning in southern Ontario, it extends westward and southward to eastern Kansas and the eastern half of Texas. The region of its most abundant growth is in the basin of the lower Ohio and in Arkansas, the best specimens appearing in fertile uplands. This is said to be the only hickory that invades the southern maritime pinebelt, growing on the low country along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in abundance. The leaves are fragrant with a powerful, resinous odor; they have five or seven leaflets with hairy petioles or stems. The bark resembles that of bitternut, and is not scaly like that of shagbark. The wood weighs 51.21 pounds per cubic foot. It is hard, strong, tough, flexible. It has about ninety-four per cent of the strength of shagbark, and eighty per cent of its stiffness. Certain selected specimens of this species are probably as strong as any hickory; but, as is the case with all woods, there is great difference between specimens, and general averages only are to be relied upon. G. W. Letterman, who collected woods for Sargent’s tests, procured a sample of this hickory near Allenton, Missouri, which showed strength sufficient to sustain 20,000 pounds per square inch, and its measure of stiffness was the enormous figure of 2,208,000 pounds per square inch. The uses of mocker nut hickory do not differ from those of other hickories. The tree is frequently nearly all sapwood, to which the name white hickory is due. Some persons suppose that the heartwood is white, but that misconception is due to the fact that some pretty large trees have no heartwood, but are sap clear through. The term “black hickory” is sometimes applied to three species with dark-colored bark which bears some resemblance to the bark of ash. They are bitternut (_Hicoria minima_), pignut (_Hicoria glabra_), and mocker nut (_Hicoria alba_). When the word black is thus used, it refers to the bark and the general outward appearance of the tree, and not to the wood, which is as white as that of any other hickory. [Illustration] PIGNUT HICKORY