(46) A Korean chestnut filled with burs. The Korean chestnut does not blight quite so readily as the American chestnut, and certain individuals are fairly blight resistant. I raised several hundreds of them, but almost all of them are dead. A fairly large number are growing well and bearing without much attention. The nut is pretty good, but coarser than that of the American chestnut.

(47) A group of Tamba chestnuts from Japan. This is the favorite chestnut of the Japanese. I secured a number of the nuts, sprouted them and planted them out here in rows, intending to transplant them to permanent sites later. Finding that they were going to blight badly, I have neglected them and have allowed them to stand. One little tree among them bore a single bur at eighteen months of age and has borne steadily ever since with a heavy crop this year. This particular tree has not blighted, but its nut is coarse and of little value.

(48) When collecting walnuts I obtained a lot of nuts from a correspondent from the Mogollon Mountains in Arizona. The nut resembles that of Juglans rupestris, but is larger and thicker shelled. No one knows whether it is an undescribed species or only a distinct variety of Juglans rupestris. Several of the nuts sprouted, but various accidents happened to them and this tree now, seven years old, is the only one of the lot living. It looks very different from any American walnut I have ever seen. In fact, it looks so much like a stunted heart nut that I suspected that one of these nuts might have gotten into the lot by accident. In digging down about the stem, however, I found only the shells of a Mogollon walnut. We can not tell what the tree will bring forth, as it is not bearing as yet.

(49) Two groups of chestnut trees of the McFarland variety, about eighteen years of age. They grow and blight and bear, but have not blighted to the point of killing altogether. They have been neglected because the nut has not much value.

(50) A group of Merribrooke hazels. Some years ago I devoted several weeks to examining hundreds of hazel bushes in this part of the country, where they are a pest, and I also visited other hazel localities at a distance. Among all the bushes examined the best nut was found on my own property and I learned later that this particular bush had been known among the boys of the locality for a century. The nut is of large size for an American hazel, thin shelled, of high quality. This group consists of transplants of root progeny from the parent bush.

(51) A Horn hazel (Corylus cornuta, commonly wrongly designated as Corylus rostrata). A species fairly abundant in Connecticut, and I transplanted these bushes because they happened to have a tremendously long involucre. The nut of the horn hazel is not of such good quality as that of the common American hazel, and I have not succeeded in making hybrids between this and other hazels as yet. The hazels are very ancient in descent and each species likes to retain particular identity.

(52) A number of stocks of red birch, white birch and scrub oak grafted with European hazels and chinkapins, but the grafts all died. The grafting was done as an experiment in the hope that we might possibly utilize our waste lands which are covered with birch and scrub oak by grafting these trees with hazels and chinkapins. Some of the grafts lived for such a long time and put out such long shoots that the experiment will be tried again next year. It would not seem worth while, excepting for the fact that it was a bad spring for grafting anyway, and hazels did not even catch on hazels, though they caught freely last year. The Japanese do grafting on stocks widely different from the scions, but we have not developed that particular feature in this country as yet.

(53) Asiatic tree hazels (Corylus colurna). This species makes a tree as large as the common oaks and bears heavily. The nut is about the size of that of the common American hazel. The tree is very beautiful, and I am using it for grafting stock and for hybridizing.

(54) Sprouting cages. A double row of galvanized wire cages sunk four inches into the ground and about four inches free above ground, filled with sandy loam and used for sprouting any nuts which are to be employed in experimental work. Each cage is fitted with a cover of galvanized wire, the purpose of which is to keep out rodents which are so destructive to planted nuts. In these cages there are now a large number of hybrid nut trees growing, and they will be transplanted to permanent sites or to the garden for culture next spring.

(55) Japanese heart nut (Juglans cordiformis). The tree is supposed by some botanists to be a form of the Siebold walnut, but it has quite a different appearance. It has an open habit with large leaves and nuts which are suggestive of the conventional heart. The quality of the nut is very good, much like that of the Siebold, but the nut is larger and compressed. The tree is very hardy and is almost tropical in appearance. It has not been planted very largely in this county, but it undoubtedly will be eventually.

(56) Siberian walnut. The tree looks much like the Siebold walnut in general appearance, but with smaller leaflets, and the nut is very much like our butternut, but smaller and with much rougher shell.

(57) Two pecan trees that I bought from a nursery about twelve years ago. They have not borne as yet and being seedlings we cannot know if they will be of value. I shall probably graft them next year and not wait for them to bear their own nuts.

(58) Two large Siebold walnuts only twelve years of age, but growing in rich ground and sometimes making five feet of growth in a single year. They were well filled with nuts two weeks ago, but the red squirrels have cut down all of the nuts including numbers which I hybridized with English walnut pollen this spring. On one of the lower branches of one of the Siebold walnuts is a long thrifty graft of the Lutz black walnut that I put in this spring, simply because I happened to cut off the lower branches of the Siebold that were shading the garden, and I happened to have some of the black walnut scions with me at the time. It will not be allowed to remain on this tree.

(59) A cross between our Siebold walnut and our butternut, now about eight years old, but growing thriftily. It has not borne nuts as yet. I have a number of these trees and they appear to be good hybrids.

(60) A group of Kaghazi Persian walnuts. A valuable variety and one of the so-called English walnuts, a term that we use for convenience because the name has become established in this country by the market men, not by the botanists.

(61) A thrifty young Chinese seedling persimmon (Diospyros lotus).

(62) Little trees of one of the nut pines (Pinus edulis). They are at their best in the arid mountains of Arizona, and the species is very important as furnishing a food supply for the Indians. The little trees are hardy here in dry soil among the rocks, but do not grow rapidly. Mine have been in more than six years and are not more than six inches in height, but are very pretty.

(63) The Chinese Tamopan persimmon. The tree is very handsome, with large glossy leaves, but somewhat tender in Connecticut and requiring protected exposure. The fruit of the Tamopan is as large as a very large apple.

(64) Several trees five years of age, the result of English walnut pollen on Siebold walnut pistillate flowers. The trees are growing very thriftily, but they show the Siebold characteristic without much evidence of the English walnut parentage.

(65) A field of Pomeroy English walnuts, notable for their beautiful white bark. The trees have been in over eight years and set nuts for the first time this year. As seedling trees we cannot tell what they will do when in full bearing.

(66) Two species of nut bearing pines from which the marking labels have become lost, and I shall not be able to determine the species until they bear cones. One of them is very beautiful, with long leaves and pleasing bluish green foliage.



A VISIT TO THE ESTATE OF THE LATE LOWELL M. PALMER, NOTABLE FOR ITS COLLECTION OF TREES AND SHRUBS, DR. MORRIS CONDUCTING.

Here we see the Ginkgo trees, two of them bearing. The Ginkgo belongs by descent to the coniferous tree group. A very fine tree with nuts that are highly prized by the Asiatics, but somewhat too resinous for the American palate. Most of the Ginkgo trees are males, but one may graft any number of males with bearing female scions.

An Araucaria imbricata grew for twenty years on this place, and we have only just learned that it died last year. This pine is one of the most important of the nut pines and furnishes a large food supply in South America. The fact that one tree lived for twenty years in this latitude means a great deal.

A number of European hazel bushes are growing on the property and bearing heavily. A large heart nut tree, but bearing small nuts, is growing well. Several of the Himalayan nut pines (Pinus excelsa) beautify the property, and one of the trees, heavily laden with cones, is at least fifty years of age. Another one of the nut-bearing pines (Pinus paviflora, from Japan) is represented by several specimens on the Palmer property, and one little tree apparently less than ten years of age, is heavily loaded with cones. Incidentally we may examine here a trifoliate orange filled with fruit. It is growing in a well protected corner of the grounds. Mr. Webber sent some valuable trifoliate hybrids to Merribrooke. One variety lived through the winter, but made a crippled start in the spring. Some day we may have good trifoliate orange hybrids in Connecticut if the Buckley hickory, Stuart pecan, Arizona walnut and imbricated pine grow here.

* * * * *

A dinner was held at the Hotel Davenport on the evening of the 5th, at which about thirty-five members and guests were present. After dinner the public was admitted and the following papers were read, Mr. Collingwood being a guest of the Association:

DR. KELLOGG: I feel a great interest in the work of this Association and a great sympathy with it. I feel that you are all working for me and I am doing what I can to promote your interests also. That is, I am trying to create a market for your products.



ADVENT OF NUTS INTO THE NATION'S LIST OF STAPLE FOODS.

DR. J. H. KELLOGG, MICHIGAN.

In these days when a condition of food shortage exists in the greater part of the civilized world, any question which concerns a nation's food supply is of public interest.

Food conservation is the great question of the hour. Visions of vanishing steaks and chops alarm the overfed and rising prices of all foodstuffs pinch the bills of fare of the poor.

It may easily be shown that most of all the hardships which the civilized world is suffering as regards food supply is due to lack of understanding and of foresight.

The fundamental error is the popular faith in the high protein ration. The physiologists are at least partly at fault. Liebig's dictum, which made protein the essential food factor in supporting work, has misled the whole civilized world for more than half a century. The dietaries of institutions, armies, whole nations have been based upon a conception which modern science has shown to be utterly false, and the result has been an economic loss which staggers belief, and a destruction of human life and efficiency which overshadows every other malign influence.

To properly appreciate the place of nuts in the national dietary we must have in mind a clear conception of the nature of food as revealed to us in the light of modern laboratory studies of human nutrition and metabolism.

Food is to an animal what soil is to a plant. It is the soil out of which we grew. What we eat today is walking around and talking tomorrow. The most marvelous of miracles is the transmutation of common foodstuffs into men and women, the transfiguration of bread, potatoes and beefsteak into human intelligence, grace, beauty and noble action. We read in holy writ how the wandering Israelites were abundantly fed in the Assyrian desert with manna from the skies and marvel at the Providence which saved a million souls from death, forgetting that every harvest is a repetition of the same miracle, that each morsel of food we eat is a gift of Heaven conveyed to us by a sunbeam. Food is simply sunshine captured by the chlorophyll of plants and served up to us in tiny bundles called molecules, which, when torn apart in our bodies by the processes of digestion and assimilation release the captured energy which warms us with heat brought from the sun and shines out in human thought and action.

It is less than a century since Liebig and Lehmann and their pupils began to unravel the mystery of food. In recent years no subject has received more assiduous attention from scientific men, and none has been made the object of more constant or more profound research than the questions of food and food supply. The feeding of animals and men is without question the most pressing and vital of all economic problems.

The labors of Voit and Pettenkofer, Rubner, Zuntz, Atwater, Benedict, Chittenden, Mendel, Lusk and Hindhede have demonstrated that there is the closest relation between food supply or food selection and human efficiency. In fact, it has been clearly shown that the quality of the food intake is just as directly and as closely related to the question of human efficiency as is the quality and quantity of gasoline to the efficiency of an automobile.

In fact it has been established as a fundamental principle in human physiology that food is fuel. Life is a combustion process.

The human body is a machine which may be likened to a locomotive—it is a self-controlling, self-supporting, self-repairing mechanism. As the locomotive rushes along the iron road, pulling after it a thousand-ton cargo of produce or manufactured wares or human freight sufficient to start a town or stock a political convention its enormous expenditure of energy is maintained by the burning of coal from the tender which is replenished at every stopping place. The snorting-monster at the head of the rushing procession gets hungry and has to have a lunch every few miles along the way. After a run of a hundred miles or so the engine leaves the train and goes into a roundhouse for repairs; an iron belt has dropped out or a brass nut has been shaken off. Every lost or damaged part of the metal leviathan is replaced, and then it is ready for another century run.

The human body is wonderfully like the locomotive. It pulls or carries loads, it expends energy, it consumes fuel and has to stop at meal stations to coal up; it has to go off duty periodically for repairs. The body needs just what the locomotive needs—fuel to furnish energy and material for repair of the machinery.

Food differs from fuel chiefly in the one particular, that in each little packet of food done up by Mother Nature there is placed along with the fuel for burning a tiny bit of material to be used for repair of the machine. In other words, food represents in its composition both the coal and the metal repair materials of the locomotive. The starch, sugar and fat of foods are the coal and the protein or albumin is the metal repair stuff. Here we see at once the reason why starch and sugar and fat are so abundant in our foodstuffs, while protein or albumin is in quantity a minor element.

But there are other differences between food and common fuel which are worthy of mention. The water and the salts are essential to meet the body's needs, especially the various mineral elements, lime, soda, potash and iron. All these we must have—lime for the bones and nerves, soda and potash to neutralize the harmful acid products of combustion processes, and iron for the blood.

All these are found in normal foodstuffs, but in greatly varying proportions, so that a pretty large variety of foods must be eaten to make sure that each of the different food principles required for perfect nutrition are supplied in ample quantity.

In recent years science has discovered another and most surprising property of food in which it transcends all other fuel substances as a diamond from the Transvaal outshines a lump of coal. Natural food contains vitamines. It has long been known that an exclusive rice diet sometimes causes beri-beri, a form of general neuritis, and that a diet of dry cereals and preserved food in time gives rise to scurvy, but the reason was a profound mystery. In very recent years it has been learned that the real cause of beri-beri and scurvy is the lack of vitamines which are associated with the bran of cereals and so are removed in the process of polishing rice and in the bolting of wheat and other grains.

Vitamines do not enter into the composition of the body as do other food principles, but they are somehow necessary to activate or render active the various subtle elements which are essential to good nutrition.

There are several kinds of vitamines. Some are associated with the bran of cereals, other with the juices of fruits. Some are easily destroyed by heat, while others survive a boiling temperature. The discovery of vitamines must stand as one of the most masterly achievements of modern science, even outshining in brilliancy the discovery of radium. It was only by the most persevering efforts and the application of all the refinements of modern chemical technic that the chemist, Funk, was able to capture and identify this most subtle but marvelously potent element of the food. This discovery has cleared up a long category of medical mysteries. We now know not only the cause of beri-beri and scurvy and the simple method of cure by supplying vitamine-containing foods, but within a very short time it has been shown that rickets and pellagra are likewise deficiency diseases, probably due to lack of vitamines, and in a recent discussion before the New York Academy of Medicine by Funk, Holt, Jacobi and others, it was maintained that vast multitudes of people are suffering from disorders of nutrition due to the same cause.

Osborne a few years ago conducted experiments which demonstrated that something more than pure food elements and salts is essential for growth and development. They found that rats fed on starch and fat lived only four to eight weeks. When protein was added they sometimes lived and grew and sometimes remained stunted or died. It was thus evident that proteins differ. Their observations proved very clearly that there are perfect and imperfect proteins. The protein of corn, zein, for example, was shown to be incapable of supporting life. With the addition of a chemical fraction, tryptophan, obtained from another protein, the rats lived, but did not grow. By adding another fractional protein, lysin, the rats were made to thrive.

A minute study of the subject by Osborne, Mendel and numerous other physiologic chemists have shown that a perfect protein is composed of more than a dozen different bodies called amino-acids, each of which must be present in the right proportion to enable the body to use the protein in body building. Each plant produces its one peculiar kind of protein. The protein of milk, caseine, is a perfect protein. Eggs and meat, of course, supply complete proteins, but among plants there are many imperfect proteins.

McCollum has demonstrated that grains, either singly or in combination will not maintain life and growth. The same is true of a mixture of grains with peas or navy beans. Another element is lacking which must be supplied to support life and growth.

With these facts before us we are prepared to inquire what place in the dietary are nuts prepared to fill? With few exceptions nuts contain little carbohydrate (starch or sugar). They are, however, rich in fat and protein. On account of their high fat content they are the most highly concentrated of all natural foods. A pound of nuts contains on an average more than 3,000 calories or food units, double the amount supplied by grains, four times as much as average meats and ten times as much as average fruits or vegetables.

For example, according to Jaffi's table, ten of our common nuts contain on an average 20.7 per cent. of protein, 53 per cent. of fat and 18 per cent. of carbohydrate, as shown in the following table:

Protein Fat Carbohydrate Almonds 21.4 54.4 13.8 Peanuts 29.8 46.5 17.1 Filberts 16.5 64.0 11.7 Hickory 15.4 67.4 11.4 Pine nut 33.9 48.2 6.5 Walnut 18.2 60.7 13.7 Pecan 12.0 70.7 18.5 Butternut 27.9 61.2 5.7 Beechnut 21.8 49.9 13.8 Chestnut 10.7 7.8 70.1 ——— ——— ——— Average 20.76 53.08 18.23

Meat (round steaks) gives 19.8 per cent. of protein and 15.6 per cent. of fat, with no carbohydrate. A pound of average nuts contains the equivalent of a pound of beefsteak, and in addition, nearly half a pound of butter and a third of a loaf of bread. A nut is, in fact, a sort of vegetable meat. Its composition is much the same as that of fat meat, only it is in much more concentrated form.

There can be no doubt that the nut is a highly concentrated food. The next question naturally is, can the body utilize the energy stored in nuts as readily as that supplied by meat products, for example.

The notion that nuts are difficult of digestion has really no foundation in fact. The idea is probably the natural outgrowth of the custom of eating nuts at the close of a meal when an abundance, more likely a super-abundance, of highly nutritious foods has already been eaten, and the equally injurious custom of eating nuts between meals. Neglect of thorough mastication must also be mentioned as a possible cause of indigestion following the use of nuts. Nuts are generally eaten dry and have a firm hard flesh which requires thorough use of the organs of mastication to prepare them for the action of the several digestive juices. Experiments made in Germany showed that nuts are not digested at all, but pass through the alimentary canal like foreign bodies unless reduced to a smooth paste before swallowing. Particles of nuts the size of small seeds wholly escaped digestion.

Having been for more than fifty years actively interested in promoting the use of nuts as a staple food, I have given considerable thought and study to their dietetic value and have made many experiments. About twenty-five years ago it occurred to me that one of the above objections to the extensive dietetic use of nuts might be overcome by mechanical preparation of the nut before serving so as to reduce it to a smooth paste and thus insure the preparation for digestion which the average eater is prone to neglect. My first experiments were with the peanut. The result was a product which I called peanut butter. I was much surprised at the readiness with which the product sprang into public favor. Several years ago I was informed by a wholesale grocer of Chicago that the firm's sales of peanut butter amounted on an average to a carload a week. I think it is safe to estimate that not less than one thousand carloads of this product are annually consumed in this country. The increased demand for peanuts for making peanut butter led to the development of "corners" in the peanut market, and more than doubled the price of the shelled nuts and to a marked degree influenced the annual production. The nut butter idea also caught on in England.

I am citing my experience with the peanut not for the purpose of recommending this product, for I am obliged to confess that I was soon compelled to abandon the use of peanut butter prepared from roasted nuts for the reason that the process of roasting renders the nut indigestible to such a degree that it was not adapted to the use of invalids. I only mention the circumstance as an illustration of the readiness with which the public accepts a new dietetic idea when it happens to strike the popular fancy.

Ways may be found to render the use of nuts practical by adapting them to our culinary and dietetic customs and to overcome the popular objections to their use by a widespread and efficient campaign of education. Other nuts, when crushed, made most delicious "butters," as easily digestible as cream, since they did not require roasting. I later found ways for preparing the peanut without roasting.

The fats of nuts, their chief food principle, are the most digestible of all forms of fat. Having a low melting point they are far more digestible than most animal fats. Hippocrates noted that the stearin of eels was difficult of digestion. The indigestibility of beef and mutton fat has long been recognized. The fat of nuts much more closely resembles human fat than do fats of the sort mentioned. The importance of this will be appreciated when attention is called to the fact that fats entering the body do not undergo the transformation changes which take place in other foodstuffs; for example, protein in the process of digestion is broken into its ultimate molecular units. Starch is transformed into sugar which serves as fuel to the body, but fats are so slightly modified in the process of digestion and absorption that after reaching the blood and the tissues they are reconstructed into the original form in which they are eaten, that is, beef fat is deposited in the tissues as beef fat without undergoing any chemical change whatever; mutton fat is deposited as mutton fat; lard as pig fat, etc. When the body makes its own fat from starch or sugar, the natural source of this tissue element, the product formed is sui generis and must be better adapted to the body uses than the animal fat which was sui generis to a pig, a sheep or a goat. It is certainly a pleasant thought that one who rounds out his figure with the luscious fatness of nuts may felicitate himself upon the fact that his tissues are participating in the sweetness of the nut rather than the relic of the sty and the shambles.

It is also worthy of note that the fat of nuts exists in a finely divided state, and that in the chewing of nuts a fine emulsion is produced so that nut fats enter the stomach in a form best adapted for prompt digestion.

Another question which will naturally arise is this: if nuts are to be granted the place of a staple in our list of food supplies will it be safe to accept them as a substitute for flesh foods?

Beef steak has become almost a fetish with many people, but the experiments of Chittenden and others have demonstrated that the amount of protein needed by the body daily is so small that it is scarcely possible to arrange a bill of fare to include flesh foods without making the protein intake excessive. This is because the ordinary foodstuffs other than meat contain a sufficient amount of protein to meet the needs of the body. Nuts present their protein in combination with so large a proportion of easily digestible fat that there is comparatively little danger of getting an excess.

It is also worthy of note that the protein of nuts is superior in quality to that of grains and vegetables. The critically careful analyses made in recent years have shown that the proteins of nuts, at least of a number of them, contain all the elements needed for building up complete body proteins, in other words, nuts furnish perfect proteins, which are not supplied so abundantly by any other vegetable product.

This fact places the nut in an exceedingly important position as a foodstuff. In face of vanishing meat supplies it is most comforting to know that meats of all sorts may be safely replaced by nuts not only without loss, but with a decided gain. Nuts have several advantages over flesh foods which are well worth considering.

1. Nuts are free from waste products, uric acid, urea, carmine and other tissue wastes.

2. Nuts are aseptic, free from putrefactive bacteria and do not readily undergo decay either in the body or outside of it. Meats, on the other hand, are practically always in an advanced stage of putrefaction, as found in the meat markets. Ordinarily meats contain from three million to ten times that number of bacteria per ounce, and such meats as hamburger steak often contain more than a billion putrefactive organisms to the ounce. Nuts are clean and sweet.

3. Nuts are free from trichinae, tapeworm and other parasites, as well as the infections due to specific disease. Nuts are in good health when gathered and remain so until eaten. The contrast between the delectable product of the beautiful walnut, chestnut or pecan tree and the abattoir recalls the story of the Tennessee school teacher who was told when she made inquiry about a certain shoulder of pork which had been promised in part payment of services, but had not arrived: "Dad didn't kill the pig." "And why not," said the teacher. "Because," replied the observing youngster, "he got well." Nearly all the cows slaughtered are tuberculous. They are killed to be eaten because too sick to longer serve as community wet nurses.

That nuts are competent to serve as staple foods might be inferred from a fact to which Professor Matthews, of the New York Museum of Natural History, calls attention to, to wit, that our remote ancestors, the first mammals, were all nut and fruit eaters. They may have gobbled an insect now and then, but their staple food was fruits and nuts, with tender shoots and succulent roots, which is still true of those old fashioned forest folks, the primates of which the orang outang, the chimpanzee and the gorilla are consistent representatives, while their near relative, also a primate, civilized man, has departed from his original bill of fare and has exploited the bills of fare of the whole animal kingdom.

The keeper of the famous big apes of the London Zoo informed me that they were never given meat. Even the small monkeys generally regarded as insectivorous, were confined to a rigid vegetarian fare and were thriving.

Whole races of men, comprising many millions, live their entire lives without meats of any sort, and when fed a sufficient amount are wonderfully vigorous, prolific, enduring and intelligent. Witness the Brahmins of India, the Buddists of China and Japan and the teeming millions of Central Africa.

Carl Mann, the winner of the great walking match between Berlin and Dresden, performed his great feat on a diet of nuts with lettuce and fruits. The Finn Kilmamen, the world's greatest runner, eats no meat. Weston, the long-distance champion, never eats meat when taking a long walk. The Faramahara Indians, the fleetest and most enduring runners in the world are strict vegetarians. The gorilla, the king of the Congo forests, is a nut feeder. Milo, the mighty Greek, was a flesh abstainer, as was also Pythagoras, the first of the Greek philosophers, Seneca, the noble Roman Senator, and Plutarch, the famous biographer. The writer has excluded meat from his diet for more than fifty years, and has within the last forty years, supervised the treatment of more than a hundred thousand sick people at the Battle Creek Sanitarium on a meatless diet.

Even carnivorous animals nourish on a diet of nuts with other vegetable foods and cooked cereals. The Turks mix nuts with their pilaff of rice and the Armenians add nuts to their baalghoor, a dish prepared from wheat which has been cooked and dried.

That nuts are not only competent to serve as a staple food, but that they may fill a very important place as accessory foods in supplementing the imperfect proteins of the grains and vegetables is shown in a very conclusive way by an extended research by Dr. Hoobler, of Detroit.

Before describing Dr. Hoobler's experiment I may be allowed to explain that some years ago, in 1899, I was asked by the then United States Secretary of Agriculture to undertake experiments for the purpose of providing a vegetable substitute for meat. Dr. Dabney said there was no doubt that the time would come when such substitutes would be needed on account of the scarcity of meat. I succeeded in developing several products which have come to be quite widely known and used more or less extensively in this country and Europe. Among these were Protose (resembling potted meat) and malted nuts, a soluble product somewhat resembling malted milk. It was noted that the malted nuts when used by nursing mothers greatly increased the flow of milk and promoted the health of the infant. Recently Dr. Hoobler undertook an extensive feeding experiment with nursing mothers and wet nurses as subjects. He made use of these nut preparations as well as of ordinary nuts and compared the results with various combinations into which meat and milk entered in various proportions. He found that a diet of fruits, grains and vegetables alone gave a very poor quality of milk, but when nuts were added the result was a milk supply superior in quantity and quality to any other combination of foodstuffs, not excepting those which included liberal quantities of milk, meat and eggs. From this it appears that nuts possess such superior qualities as supplementary or accessory foods that they are able to replace not only meats, but even eggs and milk in the dietary. The full account of Dr. Hoobler's interesting observations will be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association for August 11, 1917.

Extensive feeding experiments are now being conducted at the research laboratory of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which it is hoped will develop still other points of interest respecting the superior nutritive properties of the choicest and most remarkable of all the food products which are handed to us from the fertile laboratory of the vegetable world.

Another and most interesting phase of my subject is the relation of nut feeding to anaphylaxis. This newly coined word perhaps needs explanation for the benefit of my lay hearers. For many years it has been known that some persons were astonishingly sensitive to certain foods which indeed appeared to act as violent poisons. Oysters, shellfish, mutton, fish and other animal products, as well as a few vegetable products, especially honey, strawberries and buckwheat, were most likely to be the cause of these violent disturbances. More recently it has been found that cow's milk very often shows the same peculiarity. It is now known that this remarkable phenomenon is due to the fact that the body sometimes becomes sensitized to certain proteins which thereafter act as most violent poisons and may cause death. Sensitization to animal proteins is much the more frequent. In such cases nut products become a very precious resource. This is especially true with reference to cow's milk.

Liquid nut preparations have saved the lives of hundreds of infants within the last twenty years. I have had the pleasure of meeting several fine looking young people who owed their lives to nut-feeding when other resources had failed. One case was particularly interesting. A telegram from a well-known Senator at Washington announced the fact that his infant daughter and only child was dying from mal-nutrition, as cow's milk and all the known infant foods had been found to disagree. I advised nut-feeding, and fortunately the prescription suited the case and the little one began to improve at once. When the physician in attendance learned that the child was eating nuts he vigorously protested, declaring that such a diet was preposterous and would certainly kill the infant, but the child flourished wonderfully on the liquid nut diet, eating almost nothing else for the first three years of her life, and today is a splendidly developed young woman, a brilliant witness to the food value of nuts.

I have by no means exhausted the physiologic phases of my subject, but will now turn a moment in concluding my paper, to its economic aspects.

The high price of nuts is constantly urged as an objection to their use as a staple. It is probable that a largely increased demand would lead to so great an increase in the supply that the cost of production, and hence the cost to the consumer, would be decreased. But even at the present prices the choicest varieties of nuts are cheaper than meats if equivalent food values are compared. This is clearly shown by the following table which indicates the amounts of various flesh foods which are equivalent to one pound of walnut meats.

Beef loin, lean 4.00 pounds Beef ribs, lean 6.50 " Beef neck, lean 9.50 " Veal 5.50 " Mutton leg, lean 4.20 " Ham, lean 3.00 " Fowls 4.00 " Chicken, broilers 10.00 " Red bass 25.00 " Trout 4.80 " Frogs' legs 15.00 " Oysters 13.50 " Lobsters 22.00 " Eggs 5.00 " Milk 9.50 " Evaporated cream 4.00 "

But the great economic importance of the encouragement of nut culture in every civilized land is best shown by comparing the amount of food which may be annually produced by an acre of land planted to nut trees and the same area devoted to the production of beef. I am credibly informed that two acres of land and two years are required to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds. The product of one acre for one year would be one-fourth as much, or 150 pounds of steer. The same land planted to walnut trees would produce, if I am correctly informed, an average of at least 100 pounds per tree per annum for the first twenty years. Forty trees to the acre would aggregate 4,000 pounds of nuts, or 1,000 pounds of walnut meats. The highest food value which could be ascribed to the 150 pounds of beef would be 150,000 calories or food units. The food value of the nut meats would be 3,000,000 calories, or twenty times as much food from the nut trees as from the fattened steer, and food of the same general character, protein and fat, but of superior quality.

One acre of walnut trees will produce every year food equal to:

14,000 lbs. red bass (a ship load). 3,000 " beef (five steers). 7,500 " chicken broilers. 15,000 " lobsters. 10,000 " oysters. 60,000 eggs (5,000 dozen). 4,000 qts. milk. A ton of mutton (13 sheep). 250,000 frogs.

And when one acre will do so much, think of the product of a million acres. Ten times the product of all the fisheries of the country. Half as much as all the poultry of the country. One seventh as much as all the beef produced. More than twice the value of all the sheep. Half as much as all the pork. And many millions of acres may be thus utilized in nut culture. And the walnut is not the only promising food tree. The hickory, the pecan, the butternut, the filbert and the pinon are all capable of producing equal or greater results.

A single acre of nut trees will produce protein enough to feed four persons a year and fat enough for twice that number of average persons. So 25,000,000 acres of nut trees would more than supply the whole people of the United States with their two most expensive food stuffs. Cereals and fresh vegetables, our cheapest foods, would be needed for the carbohydrate portion of the dietary. Just think of it. A little nut orchard 200 miles square supplying one-third enough food to feed one hundred million of citizens. The trouble is the frogs and cattle are eating up our food supplies. We feed a steer 100 pounds of food and get back only 2.8 pounds. If we plant 10 pounds of corn we get back 500 pounds. If we plant one walnut we get back in twenty harvests a ton of choicest food. In nut culture there is a treasury of wealth and health and national prosperity and safety that is at present little appreciated.

* * * * *

Here is a veritable treasury of wealth, a potential food supply which may save the world from any suggestion of hunger for centuries to come if properly utilized. Every man who cuts down a timber tree should be required to plant a nut tree. A nut tree has a double value. It produces valuable timber and yields every year a rich harvest of food while it is growing.

Every highway should be lined with nut trees. Nut trees will grow on land on which no other crop will grow and which is even worthless for grazing. The pinon flourishes in the bleak and barren peaks of the rockies.

The nut should no longer be considered a table luxury. It should become a staple article of food and may most profitably replace the pork and meats of various sorts which are inferior foods and are recognized as prolific sources of disease.

* * * * *

Ten nut trees planted for each inhabitant will insure the country against any possibility of food shortage. A row of nut trees on each side of our 5,000,000 miles of country roads will provide for a population of 160,000,000. With a vanishing animal industry, nut culture offers the only practical solution of the question of food supply. As the late Prof. Virchow said, "The future is with the vegetarians."



THE IMPORTANCE OF NUT GROWING.

H. W. COLLINGWOOD, NEW JERSEY.

In these days the importance of most things is valued in figures. I never was good at figures. It seems to me that you can do anything you like with figures, except make them clear, yet it was the failure to figure that gave me my first idea of the importance of nut culture. Some 50 years ago a small boy on a New England farm could not, or would not, do his sums in the old Coburn Arithmetic. It made no difference that the teacher called it Mathematics, and pointed it with the end of a hickory stick. By any other name it was not sweet.

This boy got stuck on a question about a hare and a hound. It appeared that the hare jumped a rod at a time, and made 33 jumps a minute. The hound started 200 feet behind the hare. This hound made 18 ft. at a jump, and made 321/2 jumps a minute. Now, would the hound catch the hare before they got to a hickory tree half a mile away?

I am glad they introduced that hickory tree because the question was a hard nut at best and needed brain food. I couldn't tell where the hare would be, and I can't now; nor do I believe that some of you wise heads, grown hairless with constant thinking, could really tell how the hare came out. If I saw one of my children headed for me with such a problem in hand, I confess that I should make a prompt engagement outside. The old folks who brought me up, had sterner ways of enforcing education. They decided that the boy should live on brown bread and water until he did that example. In order to assist hunger in bringing the boy to it, after the first day showed that the boy was still going, the old gentleman hunted up all the axes and hatchets, scythes and knives on the place, and made the boy turn grindstone while he held the implements on. Greek met Greek. The boy wouldn't give in, and the old man couldn't and preserve his dignity, but try as he might the old man could not tire out the boy; the old hands gave out first, and the old man straightened his back and gazed at that wonderful boy. Now it wasn't in brown bread and water to sustain strength and will in that way. Not when there are baked beans for supper and you can smell them! The old man had to acknowledge a higher power which beat him. He wouldn't do it openly, that was not the New England way, but he did it on the second night by helping the boy to baked beans and fried potatoes without a word. The old man went to his death thinking that he had a most wonderful boy, and the little fellow did not give his secret away. Now we may have it as a slight contribution to the importance of nut culture. The sustaining power which carried the boy through his trial was the hickory nut. There was a pile of them in the attic, and the boy on the quiet, cracked and ate a quart of them every day. That boy could not spell protein to save his life, and carbo-hydrates would have scared him off the floor, but the nuts and the brown bread gave him a balanced ration which did everything except find out about the hound and the hare. I think it would have required a balanced ration fed to an unbalanced brain to settle that problem.

Now I think the importance of the nut industry must come to the general public in that way, through the stomach rather than through the mind. The human mind is a marvelous piece of mental machinery, so is the machine which sets type or weaves fine cloth, yet both are powerless unless the fire pot under the engine, or the stomach of the man, are kept filled with fuel or food. I have heard very old men tell of the prejudice which existed against coal, years ago, in New England, when attempts were made to introduce the new fuel. Cord wood was the local fuel, people knew what it was, and its preparation provided a local industry. The introduction of coal meant destruction for this local business of wood cutting, and wiped out the value of many a farm. Coal had to win its way against prejudice and local interest, and it only won out by showing power. I am sure that 75 years ago, if some visionary Yankee had said that coal would be so freely used in New England that cord wood would be almost unsaleable, the public would surely have given him that honorary title which goes with prospective and persistent knowledge, "nut."

In like manner the importance of nut growing will not be truly recognized until we can show a man in the most practical way that nuts provide the energy to be found in beef steak. It is said that knowledge creates an atmosphere in which prejudice cannot live. I know an old man who is absolutely settled in his conviction that New England has degenerated because her people have given up eating baked beans and cod fish balls, and introduced the sale of these delicacies in the West. That man says, with convincing logic, that in the old days when New England lived on brown bread and baked beans, we produced statesmen on every rocky hillside, and we dominated the thought of the nation. Now, he says, we have not developed one single statesman since the canned baked bean industry took our specialty away from us. The only way to convince him is to produce a dozen statesmen out of men who are willing to subscribe to a diet of nuts. I have a friend who says he feels like throwing a brick every time he passes a modern laundry. He says the invention of the linen collar kept him a poor man. His grandfather invested the family fortune in the stock of a paper collar factory. Many of our older men remember the time when we all wore paper collars, and bought them by the dozen in boxes. It seemed like a sure thing when the old man put all his money into it. He figured that by 1915 there would be 40,000 people in this country, each one wearing at least 200 paper collars a year, something like the hound and the hare, perhaps, but he didn't know that the hare in this case would drop dead, and the hound double his jump, as happened to paper and linen collars. Some one invented the modern linen collar. The laundry service started up, and paper collars disappeared with the family fortune. Now, my friend must work for a living, and throw mental bricks at the laundry. In a way every new habit, or every new interference with the thought and method of the plain people must run the gauntlet and submit to just such violent changes.

Now the future of the nut business, which contains the importance of the industry, depends upon our ability to make the plain, common people understand that in the future we must cut our beef steak and our chops off a nut tree. We have made some of the brainy people understand this already, but the hound is still chasing the hare, and he is several jumps behind. You may say what you will, or think as highly as you like of your own place in society, but the world is not run or pushed on by the brainy people. They may steer it for a while and master it, but only at the permission of what I may call the stomach people, who always sooner or later rise up and dominate things. A gild-edged, red line edition of nut knowledge will get the few or select class, but in order to make the industry truly important we must make a homely appeal to the plain people. It seems to me that one of the most effective nut documents yet issued is that bulletin by George Carver, a colored man at the Tuskegee Institute. Carver simply makes his appeal to the Southern farmer, and he gives him 45 ways of cooking and eating peanuts. I rather think that Carver's work in trying to get the Southern negroes to eat more peanuts and more cow-peas has done about as much for the race as the academic instruction given in the college.

On the principle that "Like begets like," I feel sure that the continued practice of cracking the shell to get at the sweet meat inside will tend to put more phosphorus and less lime into the skull of the race. I once explained the nut proposition to an energetic man and he said: "Fine—the theory is perfect—now hire a man who lives on rare beef to get out and fight for your proposition and you will put it over!"

Last year I went up into New York State with a prominent public man, who was to make a speech. This man was delayed, and in order to get there he had to jump on the last platform of the last car. He had eaten no lunch, and only a light breakfast. He said he should surely fail in his speech because he was faint from lack of food. I asked him what he would eat if he had the chance. He said soup, half a chicken, potatoes and asparagus, and apple pie. I told the train boy to bring samples of everything he had, and we finally selected an apple from Oregon, a banana from Mexico, a box of figs from California, some pop corn from Massachusetts, chocolate from Venezuela, and salted nuts from Louisiana. The air and the sunshine and the water seemed to be produced in New York, but nothing else. A great dinner for a New York man, but to his surprise it satisfied him, took the place of the chicken, and carried him through his speech with a strong punch. It seems to me that one trouble with our nut propaganda is that we go at it in such a way that the pupils regard us somewhat as "nuts," and why should the man who becomes a specialist on any subject, and airs it on all occasions, be called a nut? We shall have to admit that men are called such names. I think it is because we let our brains work somewhat like the oyster or clam, and secrete a hard shell of formal knowledge around the sweet meat of condensed human nature, for that is what all useful knowledge is. We must crack our shell of formal knowledge and grind it up finer before we can put it into the think works of the plain people.

While I was working up the Apple Consumers' League some years ago, I ran upon the fact that Corbett, the prize-fighter, consumed 3 dishes of apple sauce every day while training. Now, I had used the statement that J. P. Morgan always had a baked apple for his lunch, but I got small results from that story. Few people ever expected to make millions, and Morgan was out of their class. Every man carried a punch, which he wanted to enlarge and make effective. If Corbett used apple sauce to oil his arm for a knock-out blow, every man with red blood wanted apples. Now we must work our nut campaign in some such popular way, if we expect to put a nut on the wheel of progress. The fact that Prof. Johnson, or Dr. Jackson, or the Rev. Thompson, or Judge Dixon, or Senator Harrison, find strength and comfort from eating nuts, is very important and very pleasant, but 99 per cent of our people never expect to enter the learned profession, and they must not get the idea that these professions stand around the full use of nuts like a barbed wire fence. Most men must live and work in the rough and tumble of life, and at present they think red meat is the sustaining power for that sort of stuff. We must change their point of view. Let us find athletes, baseball men, wrestlers, fighters, runners, men who stand well in popular sports and who will publicly state that they substitute nuts for meat in part at least. We must put this thing into the popular imagination of the plain people if it is to be of full importance. When some fellow with a new brand of cigarettes wants to develop a trade among young men, he gets some noted ball player to write a letter stating his love for that brand. I think we should follow that plan somewhat in putting our nut campaign before the people. Two years ago the Oregon Agricultural College sent a football team East. The college was almost unknown here, but I asked one or two football men about it. They laughed at these Pacific Coast athletes. Here was a college they said which had issued a bulletin advising the people to send their children to school with nut sandwiches instead of meat. This man said that such training could only result in puny, half grown men, and he doubted if this team would last half way across the country. Those Oregon boys lined up a team of giants. They simply wiped the earth with most teams of their class, and left behind the cracked shells of a long line of reputation, with the sweet meat well picked out.

Personally I believe that within 25 years, 50 at the latest, our people will be absolutely forced to accept a diet of nuts in place of our present proportion of meat. As I see it, the time is coming when increased population and shortage of available land will make prime, beef nearly as scarce as turkey and venison are today. Not only so, but I think knowledge will slowly but surely lead men to change their diet from choice. My children will live to see the time when the acre nut orchard on the average farm will be considered just as useful and as much of a necessity, and far more profitable, than the present chicken yard. In that day I think the nut industry will rank in food importance second only to that of corn, and I believe that the greatest change will be found here in New England, for I believe that nut culture is to change history, and readjust population and industry to some extent. Frankly, I expect my children to live to see the time when the hickory nut in New England will rank far above the walnut industry in California or in France. I think this nut culture will, in time, bring a greater income to the New England States than all its fruits and grain combined today. Out in the wild woods on some New England hillside there are growing today strains or varieties of nuts which will do far more for this section than the Baldwin apple, or the Bartlett pear have ever done. They will be found, tamed and propagated.

You may, if you like, call me a dreamer, or what is the same thing, a "nut." I can stand that, for have I not in my short span of life seen dreams come true. Suppose the wandering hunter, or the farmer's boy, who discovered the Baldwin apple in the woods of Massachusetts, had gone back to his home and stated that the time would come when this beautiful red fruit would grow wherever it found a suitable climate, that it would revolutionize horticulture, bring millions of dollars to New England, and find its way throughout the world wherever the sails of commerce are blown. They might have hung him as a witch or dreamer, and yet, his dream would be no more improbable than what I say of nut culture in New England. I have seen the telephone, the flying machine, the gasoline engine, all grow from the vain dream of a crazy inventor to public necessities, and as surely as fate the nut industry is to bring back to the old hillsides of New England much of the profit and the glory of old days.



THE PROPER PLACE OF NUT TREES IN THE PLANTING PROGRAM.

BY C. A. REED, NUT CULTURIST,

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

In the planting of trees for most purposes, it is now possible to exercise practically the same degree of choice with regard to special fitness as is employed in the selection of men for positions or tools for a piece of work. The fruit grower in every part of the country has his special species and pomological varieties from which to choose. The foresters and landscape gardeners have their species and botanical varieties or improved strains to pick from.

Among the important purposes for which trees are planted the production of native nuts is singularly behind. The leading species of native nut-bearing trees include the hickories, the walnuts, the chestnuts, the pines, and the beech. Of these, one of the hickories, the pecan, is the only species which has so far been developed by cultivation as to become of importance for the production of an orchard product.

The timber of the pecan is less valuable than is that of most other hickories, and is in commercial use only as second-class material. However, it is the most important species of nut-bearing tree in the United States. Its native and introduced range includes the fertile lands of the plains of practically the entire southeastern quarter of the country. It is neither an upland nor a wet land tree. In the United States it is not found in the mountainous sections, nor, to any important extent, south of Middle Florida. In Mexico, it is occasionally found on mountain sides at considerable elevations and by some is supposed to be there indigenous. However, according to "Pomological Possibilities of Texas," written by Gilbert Onderdonk, of Nursery, Texas, and published by the State Department of Agriculture in 1911, its success at those altitudes is vitally dependent upon the water supply. In each case investigated by Mr. Onderdonk, while upon official trips made for the United States Department of Agriculture, he found the pecan trees to be adjacent to some stream, either natural or artificial. "At Bustamente," says Mr. Onderdonk, "one hundred and seven miles beyond Laredo, are pecan trees two hundred years old that have been watered all their lives and have continued productive. From these trees, grown from Texas pecans, pecan culture has been extended until there are now thousands of thrifty pecan trees under irrigation. One owner of a small lot sold his water right when his trees were about seventy-five years old, and when the writer visited his grounds fourteen years later, every one of his trees was either dead or dying."

We may yet find the pecan to be suitable for plateau or mountain land growth, but as Mr. Onderdonk reports was the case in Mexico, it is also the case here. The species must have ample water. With the proper amount of moisture, neither too much nor yet too little, there is no way of predicting to what altitudes or even latitudes it may be taken. Its northernmost points of native range are near Davenport, Iowa, and Terre Haute, Indiana. Iowa seed planted in 1887, at South Haven, Michigan, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, at a latitude of about 421/2 degrees, have never been seriously affected by winter temperatures. However, they have fruited but little. So far as the writer can ascertain the crops of nuts have been insignificant both as regards quantity and character. Dr. Deming reports a large tree at Hartford, Conn., at a latitude of nearly 42 degrees which, judging from a photograph which he took several years ago, was then 3 feet in diameter and quite at home, so far as growth was concerned.

Other planted trees are fairly numerous along the Atlantic Coast between Washington and New York. There is one in the southern part of Lancaster County, Pa., near Colemanville, but so far as is known to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, important crops of nuts have never been realized from any of these northern trees. Crops from the native trees in the bottoms north of latitude 39 degrees or approximately that of Washington, D. C., and Vincennes, Indiana, are fairly uncertain. Northern nurserymen are now disseminating promising varieties of pecans from what has come to be known as the "Indiana district," which includes the southwestern part of that state, northwestern Kentucky and southwestern Illinois. In many respects these varieties compare very favorably with the so-called "papershells" of the southern states. They are believed to be of very great promise for northern planting in sections to which they may be adapted. However, before any northern varieties are planted for commercial (orchard) purposes, they should be fully tested as to their adaptability in the particular section where the planting is to take place. The commercial propagation of northern varieties of pecans began less than ten years ago; the first attempts were not generally successful, and as a result there are no budded or grafted trees of northern varieties yet of bearing age.

Aside from the pecan there are no named Pomological varieties of any native nut now being propagated, with very few exceptions. So far as these exceptions are concerned, it is probable that fewer than one hundred budded or grafted trees of such varieties are yet of bearing age, and of such as have attained the age at which fruit might be expected, exceedingly few have borne in paying quantities for any number of consecutive years. Therefore, with reference to the planting of native nut species for profit, the truth of the situation is simply this: In the ordinary course of events, with the exception of the pecan, years of experimentation in the testing of varieties and in a study of their cultural requirements must be gone through before any native species of nut-bearing trees can be planted in any of the northern states with a certainty of commercial return from nuts alone which would be comparable with that of many other crops which already are upon a well established commercial basis in this part of the country.

With reference to two of the foreign species of nuts which have been introduced, the situation is quite different. In order of commercial importance of the nuts now grown in this country, two foreign species, the Persian (English) walnut and the almond, stand second and third, respectively, the pecan, which is an American species only, being first. With these exceptions, the foreign introductions are all in the experimental or test stage, and while possibly the European hazel (filbert) may now be making a strong bid for commercial recognition in the northwest, and the pistache in parts of California, neither species can yet be recommended for commercial planting.

With the exception of a few hardshell varieties of almonds, which are practically as hardy as the peach and which are suitable only for home planting, as they are in no way to be compared with the almond of commerce, there is now no indication that this species is destined ever to be come of commercial importance east of the Rocky Mountains.

The Persian or so-called English walnut is of commercial importance in this county only in the far Western States. In the South, it has thus far failed altogether. In the North and East it has held out gleams of hope, first bright, then dull, for more than a century. There is no way of telling the number of trees of this species which have been planted in the northeastern section of the country, but let us imagine it to have been sixty thousand. Of these fully fifty per cent have succumbed to climatic conditions; twenty-five per cent have been but semi-hardy, and possibly twenty-five per cent have attained the bearing age. A part of each of the last two classes have borne crops of commercial size for a number of years. Some have produced nuts of good size and quality. A great many of all those surviving are now proving susceptible to a walnut blight upon which Mr. McMurran is to report tomorrow. A liberal estimate of the present number of bearing Persian walnut trees in this part of the country would be ten per cent of the original supposed sixty thousand or six thousand trees. Of these, the writer has positive knowledge of none which are now bearing crops of nuts in such quantity, and of such size, and quality and with such regularity and which have so borne for such length of time as to encourage commercial planting. Few of the eastern grown nuts are so free from tannin as to be really pleasing to the taste, or favorably comparable with the best nuts of the market. The writer is now closely watching the best known varieties which the nurserymen are putting out, but at the present time there is no variety which, in his judgment, should be commercially planted without further testing.

The proper place for such partially improved species, as are most of the nut producers hardy in this section at the present time, is that in which they may be used for more than the single purpose of nut production. Most of the species of the botanical family Juglandaceae, to which the walnuts and hickories belong, are slow growers, and as such, are objectionable to the average planter. In answer to this, it may be said that among trees, slowness of growth is invariably associated with longevity of tree and its value when cut as timber. Also, when due pains are taken, it is possible to select species which are exceedingly satisfactory in the landscape. Several of the slides, which are to follow, illustrate the individual beauty of selected nut trees, and some show their effective use in the landscape.

Foresters are now advocating the planting of trees in waste places in the country, especially about farm buildings. There are, perhaps, no conspicuous waste places with a greater aggregate area than the strips along the public highway. In certain foreign countries, these strips are planted to fruit trees and the right of harvest awarded to the highest bidder. The revenue so obtained goes a long way toward keeping the highways in good condition. It is possible that this practice may sometime be introduced into the United States, but until public opinion is radically changed, the planting of fruit trees along the highways can not be expected to yield any satisfactory returns to the public. The experience of Dr. Morris who planted cherry trees along the public road past his farm here in Connecticut, where we have just been, is typical of what, under present conditions, might be expected in any part of the country. When the cherries were ripe, automobile parties came for many miles to pick the fruit, and when that in the highway was gone, the cherries from the nearby orchard were taken. In both cases, the branches were broken down and the trees left in badly mangled condition. Dr. Morris then tried nursery-grown and expensive evergreens, but on Sundays, automobile parties came again with spades and shovels and dug up the trees.

The ratio of population to tillable land in this country is not such that, for a long time to come, the American people as a whole will be pressed into the using of highway land for the production of crops or into respecting the right of the public to harvest such crops as might be grown in its highways. Therefore, for the present, except in densely populated, or in more than ordinarily well regulated communities, it would be useless to advocate the planting of ordinary fruit trees along the public roadways.

Irrespective of the possible value of their crops, fruit trees of most species are both too small and too short-lived to be suitable for highway planting. With nut trees, the situation is entirely different. The native walnuts, most species of hickories and the American beech are large-growing and long-lived trees. In addition, they are capable of withstanding severe temperatures; they are tough and strong and not liable to injury by storm or while being climbed by ordinary persons; and they readily adapt themselves to a wide range of soil, moisture, and climatic conditions.

Ordinary species of nut trees can not be recommended for the dual purpose of timber and nut production, as, for the former purpose, the trees should be planted close together in order to induce length and straightness of trunk with a minimum of top or bearing surface, while for the latter, they should be planted in the open and given space for the maximum development to bearing surface and a minimum length of trunk. The great demand for hickory in the making of axles, wheels, and other vehicle parts and handles for tools, and for walnut in the manufacture of furniture and gun stocks, makes it not only possible but common practice to use these woods in short lengths. Therefore, both species planted along the highways and in other waste places might profitably be converted into their timber upon reaching maturity, if their crops of nuts should prove to be of small commercial value.

The butternut, J. cinerea, is a less symmetrical grower than are the black walnuts. The timber is less valuable and the nuts are cracked with greater difficulty. Nevertheless, it is the most hardy of any native species of Juglans. Its kernels are rich in quality and of a flavor more pleasing to some persons than that of any other nut. Cracking the native butternut and marketing the kernels affords the rural people in many sections a fairly profitable means of employment during the winter months. Its native range extends farther north than does that of either the eastern black walnut, or that of the shagbark hickory, Hicoria ovata, and considerably beyond that of the shellbark hickory, H. laciniosa. Therefore, in view of its hardiness, and the merit of its kernels, it is well worthy of consideration for planting in the most northern parts of the country.

Were it not for the blight which is now making practically a clean sweep of destruction over the eastern states, wherever the native chestnut is found, the American chestnut, Castanea dentata, would certainly be entitled to leading consideration as a highway, an ornamental or a nut producing tree. Unaffected by blight or other diseases, it is one of the largest-growing and most graceful species in the eastern United States. The European chestnut is nearly as susceptible to this blight as is the American species. The chestnuts from eastern Asia now appear to be sufficiently immune to offer a practical solution to the situation by their introduction into this country. However, they commonly lack the sweet agreeable flavor of the American species and need hybridizing in order to improve their quality. This, the Federal Department of Agriculture is now doing, and in due time, there may be something to offer in ample quantity which will make a satisfactory substitute for the native species. Exclusive of the Asiatic species and the government hybrids, there are now no available species which can be recommended for planting in the blight affected area, and these should be planted only for test purposes.

The pines referred to at the outset of this article as being important nut producers are all western species found only on the mountains and nowhere under cultivation. There are at least fourteen American species. Representatives are found in most of the Rocky Mountain states. The most important species is Pinus edulis. It is found at altitudes of from five to seven thousand feet in the mountains of New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico. In favorable years, the seeds are gathered in enormous quantities under the name of "pinons," or according to the Mexicans, "pinyonies." The nuts are rich in flavor but small and difficult to extract from the shells. They are not well known in the eastern market, but in the southwest they form a highly important article of food for the Indians and Mexicans. These pines are exceedingly slow growers and not of graceful form. They could scarcely be considered for ornamental planting, except at the altitudes to which they are common, and then; probably, only where some more satisfactory shade trees would not succeed.

Among all American species of trees, it is probable that in a combination of beauty, longevity, strength and hardiness, the American beech, Fagus grandifolia, is unexcelled. Although commonly looked upon as being a northern species, its range extends south to northern Florida and west to the Trinity River in Texas. It is most familiar as a clean-barked, spreading tree, with low head, and a height of from fifty to sixty feet. However, its form depends largely upon environment. The writer has seen it in the bottoms of southwestern Georgia, in common with the magnolia, growing to a height of from seventy-five to one hundred feet and with trunks of two feet in diameter extending upward in a manner which, with regard to height and uniformity of size, compared favorably with the long-leafed Georgia pine. The nuts of the beech are rich in quality and of excellent flavor, but owing to their small size and the great difficulty attending the extraction of the kernels, they are not ranked as being of direct importance for human food. Their principal use in this country is as a mast crop for turkeys and swine, for which they serve a most useful purpose. Crops which can be used in this manner to good advantage, thus practically obviating the problems of harvesting, storing and marketing, are certainly well worth thinking about in these days of labor scarcity.

There are few large sections of the United States adapted to the growing of trees to which some nut-bearing species is not suited. Most species of nut trees are as capable of producing shade and ornamental effect, and are as hardy and lasting as any others which might be mentioned. In addition, they produce an edible product which is entering into the list of staple food products with great rapidity. The present scarcity of meats and the consequent high prices are compelling the substitution of other products. The superiority of nuts over practically all other products which are available, as substitutes, scarcely needs argument. Already, nuts are being pressed into service as rapidly as production permits, and perhaps more so than prices and comparative food values justify. Singularly enough, this section of the United States, which is the oldest and most thickly populated portion of the country, and that within which the greatest number of edible species of nuts are indigenous, is today practically without pomological varieties for planting. Within this area, individuals have made tests of species and varieties for many generations, yet little progress has resulted. The obvious need is for further test on a large scale. A better opportunity for the making of such a test could scarcely be imagined than that of highway planting.

Pomologists are firmly recommending the exclusive use of budded or grafted trees. But this advice applies only to orchard planting for the purpose of commercial production. Until more and better varieties are known and their merits established, that portion of the country lying north of the pecan belt and east of the Rocky Mountains, must await the development and trial of new varieties. Seedlings must be planted in large numbers from which to select varieties. The process is too slow and the percentage of varieties which may be expected to be worth while too small for it to be possible for the individual to make much headway during an ordinary lifetime. Our present system of national highways by which all parts of the country are being connected is perfecting the opportunity. The general planting along these great national highways of elm, oak, poplar, tulip, cedar, hemlock, magnolia, pine or any other species which, unless cut, are capable of producing no crop other than that of shade, would hardly be in keeping with the present need for utility. It would be giving a questionable degree of thought to the welfare of future generations.

To the list of nut trees as utility trees there might be added the sugar maple, and certain species of prolific-bearing oaks. The former could be drawn upon for the making of syrup and sugar, and the acorns from the latter could be put to good use as hog and turkey food. In wet sections, willows might prove useful from which to cut material for baskets, furniture, or tying bundles.

A way of overcoming the objection of slow growth of some of the nut species might be the alternate planting of quick-growing species which would furnish shade in a minimum length of time, and which could be cut for pulp or other purposes by the time the nut trees reach maturity.

A practical objection to highway planting of nut trees is that unless cared for, such trees are in danger of becoming breeding places for diseases and insect pests which would quickly spread to nearby orchards. However, such planting in numbers too small to be worth caring for is not to be considered. Already the country is agreed that the maintaining of the middle of the road in such condition that it can render maximum service is a paying investment. The suggestion here made is only as the next step in highway investment. It is a proposition to make more comfortable and attractive the present system of roadways, and at the same time to help develop new varieties of nut trees for orchard planting. Unless such new varieties are soon to become available, a large part of the country will presently find itself dependent upon outside sources for its principal substitute for meat and its main supply of vegetable fats.

A little thought should be able to work out a sound program for the planting of utility trees on practically every highway in this country.

Since this manuscript was completed, attention has been called to a reference to a war use of the horse chestnut, which appears on page 18 of the July number of "My Garden," a monthly publication, with headquarters at 6 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, London. As the heading "NEW USE FOR HORSE CHESTNUTS," and its sub-head "Cereal Saving," both indicate it may be of interest to the American people, although the production of horse chestnuts in this country is not large. The article which is credited to The Times, is as follows: "An important war time use has been found for horse chestnuts by the systematic collection and transport of all the nuts that can be obtained to the centre where they can be utilized. Up to the present time cereals have been necessary for the production of an article of great importance in the prosecution of the war. Under the direction of the Food (War) Committee of the Royal Society, which acts for and in consultation with the Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies, the Minister of Food, and the Minister of Munitions, experiments have been carried out during the winter to find a substitute for these cereals, and thus to set them free for food supplies. Brilliant work has ended in the difficulties being overcome, and the proof that the seeds of the horse chestnuts answer the purpose admirably. Except as food for deer and goats the seeds have, in the past, been practically a waste crop, and they can be used instead of cereals, essential for human consumption, without interfering with any existing industry or interest.

"The organization for the collection and transport of all that can be obtained is being rapidly perfected. When the time comes it will be the privilege and duty of every owner of a tree or trees to help and to give facilities for the collection of the nuts. Every ton of chestnuts collected will set free an equivalent amount of grain. The tree being chiefly grown for ornamental purposes occurs most freely in towns and private gardens. In some towns it is the practice to remove the young nuts from the trees in July so as to prevent them from being stoned and broken by boys later on when the "conker" demand begins. Urban authorities and park-keepers must discontinue the practice this year. Chestnut Day, early in next autumn, will have a far wider observance and significance this year than any Chestnut Sunday at Bushey, or than Arbor Day over here, or even in America. For once the small boy will collect the nuts with the full approval of the owner.

"To prevent any misapprehension it should perhaps be made clear that the horse chestnuts will not themselves be used as food. They are required for another purpose altogether, and the only way in which they will help the food supplies of the country is by setting free cereals which have now to be consumed in the production of a necessary article."

* * * * *

THURSDAY, SEPT. 6, 1917.

Meeting called to order at 9.30 A. M.

The Nominating Committee reported the renomination of all the officers. The Secretary was instructed to cast one vote for these candidates.

[Carried.]

Moved and carried that the selection of the time and place for next meeting to be left to the Executive Committee with especial consideration of a joint meeting with the National Association at Albany, Georgia.



SOME INSECTS INJURING-NUT TREES.

BY W. E. BRITTON, STATE ENTOMOLOGIST, CONNECTICUT.

Nut-bearing trees, like other kinds of trees, are attacked by insect pests. Some kinds are seriously injured by them; others scarcely at all. Some of these insects are borers in the trunk and branches; some devour the leaves; some feed inside the nuts and ruin them; some suck the sap from the stems and leaves.

I shall make no attempt in this paper to enumerate these pests. Time forbids. I shall only mention a few of the most obvious and most serious, and where possible, point out control measures.

THE WALNUT CATERPILLAR.

Datana integerrima G. & R.

During the month of August clusters of blackish caterpillars bearing white hairs, may be seen stripping the terminal branches of black walnut, butternut and hickory trees. This is called the walnut caterpillar, and it has been very abundant in Connecticut this season. Many small trees have been entirely stripped and large ones almost defoliated. There is only one brood each year in Connecticut, though two occur in the southern states, and the pupae winter in the ground. The adult is a reddish brown moth, having a wing-spread of about one and one-half inches. Clipping off the twigs and crushing the mass of caterpillars is perhaps the simplest control method on small trees. Spraying with lead arsenate will prevent defoliation.

THE FALL WEB-WORM.

Hyphantria cunea Drury.

Though a general feeder attacking all kinds of fruit, shade and forest trees, the fall web-worm commonly feeds upon the foliage of nut trees, especially hickories, causing considerable damage in the South. The adult is a white moth, having a wing-spread of an inch or more, appearing in midsummer and laying its egg-cluster on the under side of a leaf. The young caterpillars make a nest at the end of a lateral branch by drawing the leaves together with their webs. These nests usually appear in July and August, though in Connecticut there is a partial second brood and usually a few nests of the early brood may be found in June. In the South there are two complete generations. When the larvae have exhausted their food supply, they extend their nest by taking in fresh leaves, but always feed inside the nest, differing in this respect from the tent caterpillar which makes its nests here in May. When fully grown the caterpillars are about one and one-fourth inches long, with brown bodies covered with light brown hairs, and may be seen crawling about seeking a place to pupate. They soon go into the ground where they transform, the adults emerging the following year.

The best remedies are (1) clipping off and burning the nests when small, and (2) spraying the foliage with arsenical poison.

THE WALNUT BUD MOTH.

Acrobasis caryae Grote?

Inconspicuous nests containing small caterpillars are often found at the ends of the new shoots of Juglans regia, seriously injuring them, and sometimes killing the trees. One small tree two feet high was killed, and thirty-five pupae were found in the nests at Dr. Morris' farm in 1912. The adult is a small gray moth with a wing expanse of about three-fourths of an inch. There are three broods each season in Connecticut, the larvae appearing about June 1, July 10 and August 18.

By spraying the foliage with lead arsenate (3 lbs. in 50 gals. water) this insect can be controlled. One application should be made about June 1, followed by a second about July 10.

Though this insect is thought to be Acrobasis caryae Grote, it is often difficult to distinguish some of these species in this genus without a knowledge of their food habits and seasonal life histories. We possess such knowledge regarding this species which we have studied and reared in Connecticut, but it is lacking in connection with adult specimens in the United States National Museum labeled caryae, which superficially seemed identical with ours. Further study, therefore, may prove this to be an undescribed species. There are other bud-worms attacking nut trees, especially in the southern states, where they cause considerable damage to pecans.

THE WALNUT WEEVIL OR CURCULIO.

Conotrachelus juglandis LeC.

Probably the most serious enemy of Juglans, in Connecticut at least, is the walnut weevil or curculio, Conotrachelus juglandis LeC. The larvae tunnel in the tender shoots, often ruining the new growth, and they also infest the nuts. The adults feed upon the shoots and leaf petioles. Observations on the different hosts indicate that Juglans cordiformis and J. sieboldiana are preferred, and the most severely injured, followed in order by cinerea, regia, nigra and mandshurica.

Though described as early as 1876, little was known about the life history of this insect until the studies were made at the Station in 1912 by Mr. Kirk and the writer. Formerly it was supposed that this insect attacked and injured only the nuts or fruit, and Dr. Morris in 1909 seems to be the first on record to observe the injury to the shoots of Juglans regia. It was on the trees of Dr. Morris here in Stamford and those of Mr. H. L. Champlain at Lyme that the life history studies were made. There is but one brood each year, and the winter is passed in the adult stage. The beetles appear the latter part of May and feed upon the stems and leaf veins during the egg-laying period, which extends from the last week in May up to August 1st. The eggs are laid in irregular crescent-shaped punctures, similar to those of the plum curculio, and hatch in from six to twelve days, depending upon the weather.

From four to six weeks are necessary for the development of the larvae, and when mature they go into the ground where they remain for about ten days an inch or so beneath the surface. They then pupate, and from sixteen to twenty days later the adult beetles emerge. They fly to the trees and eat small holes chiefly at the base of the leaf petioles, but must early go into winter quarters as they are seldom seen after the first week in September.

This insect occurs throughout the Eastern United States, but seems to cause more injury in Connecticut than has been noted elsewhere. The remedy is to spray the new shoots and under side of the leaves about June 1, with lead arsenate (6 lbs. of the paste in 50 gallons of water), to kill the beetles when feeding on the leaf petioles.

THE NUT WEEVILS.

Balaninus sp.

Several kinds of nuts are attacked and injured by long-beaked snout beetles or weevils belonging to the genus Balaninus, the chestnut probably being the most seriously damaged. All of them feed inside the nuts or fruit during the larval stage, and the larvae are without legs. As both the methods of attack and the life history are similar for all species, they will be considered here in a group. For the sake of distinguishing them, however, their names are mentioned.

Larger Chestnut weevil, Balaninus proboscideus Fabr. Lesser Chestnut weevil, B. rectus Say. Hickory nut or Pecan weevil, B. caryae Horn. Hazelnut weevil, B. obtusus Blanch. Common acorn weevil, B. quercus Horn. Mottled acorn weevil, B. nasicus Say. Straight-snouted acorn weevil, B. orthorhynchus Chittn. Sooty acorn weevil, B. baculi Chittn. Confused acorn weevil, B. confusor Ham. Spotted acorn weevil, B. pardalus Chittn.

All of these weevils pass the winter in the ground in the larval stage, transforming to pupae about three weeks before the adult beetles emerge, which varies from June, when they are usually few and scattering, to September, when they have become abundant. Thus there is a single brood each year, and the larval period lasts from three to five weeks in the nuts and some ten months in the ground, from two to eight inches below the surface.

The control of these weevils is difficult, and ordinary methods such as spraying are not effective. In fact little can be done other than destroying the weeviled nuts, which may be fed to hogs. When first gathered the nuts may be fumigated with carbon disulphide. About two fluid ounces of the liquid should be used for each bushel of nuts and placed in a shallow dish on top of the nuts, which should be enclosed in a tight box or barrel. The period of fumigation should be from 12 to 24 hours. Where nuts are not to be used for seed they may be thrown into boiling water for about five minutes—just long enough to kill the weevils. The nuts are then dried and sold. Most of the weeviled nuts will rise to the surface and may be discarded, but this test is not absolute and cannot be depended on to distinguish the sound from the weeviled nuts.

HICKORY BARK BEETLE OR BARK BORER.

Scolytus quadrispinosus Say.

Outbreaks of the hickory bark borer occur periodically throughout the northeastern United States, and during the past five years many hickory trees in this vicinity have died.

The adult is a small black beetle appearing in May and June, which eats holes in the axils of the leaf stems causing them to fall early—usually in July and August. Brood galleries are then made longitudinally just under the bark of the trunk by the female, and a row of eggs is placed along either side of this brood chamber. On hatching the grubs, which are at first very small, tunnel at right angles to the central chamber, each making its own separate gallery. These galleries never meet or cross each other, but must necessarily diverge toward their extremities as they become larger. The effect of this is to girdle the tree which soon dies. The larvae pass the winter under the bark, finish their development in the spring, pupate, and the adults emerge in May and June from small round holes about the size of bird shot.

For control measures, Dr. Hopkins advises examining the trees during the fall and marking all dead and dying trees within an area of several square miles. Then between October 1 and May 1, cut all such trees and dispose of the infested portion to destroy the insects before the adults emerge.

Many forms of treatment have been devised and recommended by tree doctors for the control of this insect. Some of them may be worth trying; most are of doubtful value, and some are absolutely injurious to the trees. On July 3, 1914, some affected hickory trees on the Station grounds were sprayed heavily with powdered lead arsenate, 4 lbs. in 50 gallons of water, to which one pint of "Black Leaf No. 40" was added. Two days later many dead beetles were found on the tar walks under the trees, and a few were observed each day up until about the middle of August. Most of the trees treated, however, had been so badly injured by the insect that they were removed. Since then this insect has caused little damage on the grounds, though a few hickory trees still remain. In 1901 an outbreak of the hickory bark beetle caused the death of 110 trees on the Hillhouse place in New Haven; then the destructive work of the insect ceased and the few remaining hickory trees are still standing and in fairly good condition. I mention these instances to show that nature's control methods through parasites and natural enemies is far more effective with certain pests than any which man has yet devised. Of course, we hope that in the future man will make better progress along this line.