more walks with the doctor and
the camera, I hope!

We of the cold North, as we crack the toothsome pecan, hardly realize
its kinship with the hickory. It is full brother to our shellbark,
which is, according to botany, _Hicoria ovata_, while the Southern tree
is _Hicoria pecan_. A superb tree it is, too, reaching up amid its
vigorous associates of the forests of Georgia, Alabama and Texas to a
height exceeding one hundred and fifty feet. Its upright and elegant
form, of a grace that conceals its great height, its remarkable
usefulness, and its rather rapid growth, commend it highly. The
nut-clusters are striking, having not only an interesting outline, but
much richness of color, in greens and russets.

[Illustration: The American beech in winter]

It may seem odd to include the beech under the nut-bearing trees, to
those of us who know only the nursery-grown forms of the European beech,
"weeping" and twisted, with leaves of copper and blood, as seen in parks
and pleasure-grounds. But the squirrels would agree; they know well the
sweet little triangular nuts that ripen early in fall.

The pure American beech, uncontaminated and untwisted with the abnormal
forms just mentioned, is a tree that keeps itself well in the eye of the
woods rambler; and that eye is always pleasured by it, also. Late in
winter, the light gray branches of a beech thicket on a dry hillside on
the edge of my home city called attention to their clean elegance amid
sordid and forbidding surroundings, and it was with anger which I dare
call righteous that I saw a hideous bill-board erected along the
hillside, to shut out the always beautiful beeches from sight as I
frequently passed on a trolley car! I have carefully avoided buying
anything of the merchants who have thus set up their announcements where
they are an insult; and it might be noted that these and other offensive
bill-boards are to others of like mind a sort of reverse
advertising--they tell us what _not_ to purchase.

[Illustration: The true nut-eater]

Years ago I chanced to be present at a birth of beech leaves, up along
Paxton Creek. It was late in the afternoon, and our reluctant feet were
turning homeward, after the camera had seen the windings of the creek
against the softening light, when the beeches over-arching the little
stream showed us this spring marvel. The little but perfectly formed
leaves had just opened, in pairs, with a wonderful covering of silvery
green, as t