35 



EDIBLE ACORNS AS FOOD FOR MAN 



LIVESTOCK AND FOWLS 



By Robert T. Morris, New York City 



Most of us have had a sort of general knowledge about acorns with- 

 out thought of their potential in the way of future food supply. It 

 was only when my interest happened to become engaged in a special 

 way that the subject began to expand rapidly and I soon found that 

 a whole lifetime could be devoted to this one subject. The situation 

 was very much like that in which the German professor found himself 

 when he suddenly realized that he had wasted a lifetime on verbs 

 when he should have given all effort to concentration upon the dative 

 case. 



The subject of acorns for food supply has remainedi in the back- 

 ground for the reason that farmers are now producing so much more 

 food than we can use that they do not know what to do with the over- 

 supply. Farmers are trying all sorts of quack methods for relief in 

 order to escape from a situation which they have brought upon them- 

 selves. The next move, it seems to me, will not be so much in the way 

 of finding new food supplies but rather the cheapening of those which 

 we already have. Cheapening of the ones which we already have will 

 occur when the expense of labor and tillage of the soil for the raising 

 of annual crops will diminish and we then turn to subsoil crops which 

 avoid the expense of tillage and labor. 



Acorns already belong to tree crops which are utilized largely as food 

 for livestock and fowls and in many parts of the world they constitute 

 a basic food supply for man. It is only recently that the screw point 

 of my interest in acorns became engaged in the thread of the subject. 



My friend, Dr. B. L. McClellan of Xenia, Ohio, sent on some acorns 

 from Yellow Springs in his state. He said that they were not only 

 highly prized by pigs and fowls but that he had eaten them roasted 

 and boiled and found them to be particularly good. I went out to 

 Yellow Springs and looked over the oak tree. It was a narrow leaved 

 chestnut oak (Quercus Muehlenbergii). Other trees of the species 



