nuts. The hickory wood is exceedingly strong and tough and is
used wherever stout material is needed. For the spokes, wheels
and bodies of buggies and wagons, for agricultural implements,
for automobile wheels and for handles, hickory is unexcelled. The
shafts of golf clubs as well as some types of base-ball bats are
made of hickory. Most hickory trees are easy to identify on
account of their shaggy bark. The nuts of the hickory, which
ripen in the autumn, are sweet, delicious and much in demand.

Our native elm tree is stately, reaching a height of 100 feet and
a diameter of 5 to 6 feet or more. It is one of our best shade
trees. Elm wood is light brown in color and very heavy and
strong. It is the best available wood for making wagon wheel hubs
and is also used largely for baskets and barrels. The rims of
bicycle wheels generally are made of elm.

The canoe birch is a tree which was treasured by the early
Indians because it yielded bark for making canoes. Birch wood is
used in making shoe lasts and pegs because of its strength and
light weight, and the millions of spools on which cotton is wound
are made of birch wood. School desks and church furniture, also,
are made of birch. The orange-colored inner bark of the birch
tree is so fine and delicate that the early settlers could use it
as they would paper. No matter whether birch wood is green or
dry, it will burn readily. The birch was the most useful tree of
the forest to the Indians. Its bark was used not only for making
their canoes, but also for building their wigwams. They even
dried and ground the inner bark into a flour which they used as a
food.