Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 216, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1917 — People of United States Should Not Waste Nut Harvest [ARTICLE]

People of United States Should Not Waste Nut Harvest

By Garrett P. Serviss, Scientist

The time of year is fast approaching when the forests will begin to put on their autumn robes and nowhere in the world are these robes so royally splendid as they are in the United States. But this year, now that the war has made us a feeder of’ nations on a scale Heretofore 'undreamt of, there is another attraction in the autumn woods besides their beauty of foliage which ought to command universal interest and draw everybody who can reach them into their fragrant aisles. It isi ithe call of the nut harvest. If you want to find nuts follow a squirrel. But the best lesson he teaches is that of the food value of nuts. Every nut-bearing tree is a fruit tree. The nut trees of this country, alone, could go far in presenting a food famine. -Personally, I regard the butternut as the best nut that grows, not excepting its great cousin, the walnut. Besides, the butternut is a native American. But, go and see if you can find any butternuts in the markets! Go and ask the farmers about their butternut trees, and hear them tell you that there used to be some “in father’s time,” but nou they’ve been “cut off” or “let die out.” I venture to say that no butternui tree was ever cut down, while still in the bearing age, without loss, no I matter what was put in its place. It is the same with the hickory—another native of America. Ona of the saddest bits of news I have heard in many a day is that the hickories are threatened with extermination by a new insect enemy. But regardless of new.enemies, the hickory has been shamefully neglected. Some of those trees supplied successive generations with nourishment —a dessert worth a thousand concoctions of the kitchen, end that cost the farmer simply the easy and delightful labor of picking up the 'nuts that the frosts released and the coal autumn winds brought down, 'The consequence of our neglect of the nut trees is that theii product has become a rare luxury instead of an unfailing staple on our food lists. As the squirrel teaches the value of nuts, a more unpoetical animal, ithe hog, teaches that of acorns. Nothing, perhaps, will fatten a hog so 'Well and so quickly, or give it market quality of so high a value, as a diet of acorns. But I suppose that relatively few persons are aware that acorns are an excellent and palatable food for man. “Acorns,” says Doctor Hornaday, “are one of the most valuable and abundant crops of our* forests* and no use whatever is being made of it The acorn is going to waste in the United States while it is being eaten in bread in Germany.” What more need be said ? 1 ' ' ■ • ■ i , ft. *