93 



THE FIRST YEAR AT THE KEYSTONE PECAN RESEARCH 



LABORATORY 



Elam G. Hess, President, Manheim, Pa. 



When we talk about nuts as a staple food we are not talking 

 about some new fad or some untried' experiment. The use of nuts as 

 a staple food dates back to the beginnings of the human race. "All 

 scientific men are now agreed that nuts were the chief staple in the 

 diet of primitive man," -says Dr. J. H. Kellogg. 



Our investigations concerning the use of one of our most common 

 nuts takes us back to that nut which takes it name from the Gauls^ — 

 the WALNUT. This word is a corruption of the name GAULNUT, 

 rpplied by the people of England when this nut was brought over from 

 France. The walnut was used in middle Europe as a staple food long- 

 before the era of Julius Caesar. Whether the walnut had been intro- 

 duced into Rome before this time we iire not sure. But we do know 

 that practically half a century later it was a popular food in Rome, 

 and was called the Royal Nut. 



Charles Darwin speaks of baboons opening nuts by breaking them 

 with stones. Prehistoric man may or may not have been a descendent 

 of that type of baboons, but Professor Eliot, one of our most eminent 

 authorities on the habits of j:)rimitive man, says that primitive man 

 found his meat supply in the nuts borne by the forests of nut trees 

 which covered the earth in those days of the beginning of the human 

 race. 



Can milk, eggs, and the other food staples of today show similar 

 history.'' Worthington Smith, in his book entitled "Man the Primeval 

 Savage." writes: "He had for food ha/,el-nuts, beech-nuts, sweet chest- 

 nuts, earth-nuts, and acorns." Wells, in his Outline of History, fixes 

 the time when milk caine into use as a food as thousands of years later 

 during' the neolithic period when grain was first cultivated in middle 



