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The Mezquite is invaluable to the Mexicans and Indians of our 
Southwestern territory, to whom it supplies food and fuel, and 
sometimes bad beer. The fruit is a yellow bean-like pod, 6 to 8 
inches long, filled around and between the seeds with a sweet and 
very palatable pulp; it contains more than half its weight of as- 
similable nutritive principles? of which the most important is sugar 
in the proportion of 25 to 30 per cent. Most herbivorous animals, 
specially the horse, mule and donkey, are fond of this pod and 
thrive upon it. : 
A second species deserves mention, P. pubescens Benth., the 
Screw-Bean or Tornillo, so well characterized by the screw-like 
fruit. It is abundant from western Texas to California and south- 
ward into Mexico. The pulp of the bean is even finer than that 
of the Mesquite, but is too scant to be of much importance. 
Another but very different plant of the Lecumnosae affording 
fruit to the Indians is Falcata comosa (L.) Kuntze (Amphicarpa 
monoica Ell.), the Hog Peanut, a slender, twining perennial, ranging 
from Canada to Florida and westward to Dakota. The rudimentary 
lower flowers, borne on filiform creeping branches, bury themselves 
into the ground where they mature usually only one large fleshy, 
obovate or pear-shaped seed. This subterranean seed is edible 
and nutritious. I have seen the Indians dig it up in the spring as 
far north as Bismarck, N. D. The seeds of the pods on the 
upper branches, are said to be as good as peas for the table. 
Along the banks of the upper Missouri and its many tribu- 
taries, grows the Bullberry (Shepherdia argentea Nutt.), a most 
abundant and ubiquitous shrub, sometimes forming miles of im- 
passable thickets. The pistillate plant becomes covered with a | 
profusion of small globose, nearly sessile, bright red berries, which 
contrast prettily with the bluish-white foliage; they are very acid 
and hardly edible until touched by frost in the early days of 
October, when they are sweetened and acquire a pleasant flavor. 
They have always been one of the staple foods of the Sioux and 
other Indians who eat them raw and stewed or mixed with other 
esculents. The whites use large quantities of them for making a 
delicious jelly, preferred by many to currant jelly. An analysis by 
Prof. Trimble gave the following constituents: water 71.28, nitro- 
genous substances 0.14, free acid (citric and malic) 2.45, total 
Sugar 5.47, mucilage and pectin 0.42. 
