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 1(1/2) 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).