54 A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 



varieties coming off before frost and two to three weeks in advance of the 

 Americans, which gives them an advantage in the market. The past season 

 the first shipments of Japan Chestnuts to New York market returned $14.00 

 per bushel; the next week $10.00, and the week following, after the European 

 and American varieties began to appear, the price fell -to $8.00 and $6.00 per 

 bushel, while the Americans were bringing $3.00 to $4.00 per bushel. 



Prof. W. A. Buckkout says, in Bulletin of Pennsylvania Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Station: " In the diversification of industries, which is now deserv- 

 edly attracting so much thought and attention, the increase of our plants for 

 cultivation should find a place, and of cultivated plants the nut-producing trees 

 are among the most promising. Nuts have a higher nutritive value generally 

 than have those fruits which are made up of the fleshy coverings of the seeds, 

 as in the apple and peach, &c. They are rather of the nature of staple articles 

 of diet, and approach the grains in food value. They are, moreover, not of 

 the perishable class, and are easily handled with little waste and risk. While 

 all the nut trees are probably capable of improvement, and each has adaptation 

 to its particular sitution, the one most promising for Pennsylvania is the Chest- 

 nut. ' ' 



In Southern Europe their food value is thoroughly appreciated, and it 

 enters largely into their daily diet. 



Paris alone annually consumes fifteen million pounds of Chestnuts. In 

 Italy the peasant family that owns even one large Chestnut tree is sure of a 

 living. If they want bread, the nuts are peeled and ground fine, and the flour 

 they make is as white as prepared from wheat by the American ' ' patent ' ' 

 process. If they want vegetables of any kind, the Chestnuts are boiled, baked 

 with meats, roasted or made into soups. The Italian, cook books are replete 

 with recipes for preparing Chestnuts. 



For persons who cannot eat starchy foods, Chestnut bread would be more 

 wholesome than wheat, corn or rye bread, since all the cereal foods are full of 

 starch. 



Americans have not an idea of the economic value of the Chestnut tree. 

 We are as ignorant as well of the value of most of the other nut-bearing trees. 



FOOD VALUE OF CHESTNUTS. 



From the' Christian Register. 



When the cereals cease to be cultivated, the " granaries of the world " will 

 no longer be the vast plains of Australia, India, Russia and the Western States 

 of America. They will be the now untilled hillsides of the temperate zones, 

 the now impenetrable jungles of the tropics. The mountainous regions of our 

 Eastern States will regain the agricultural supremacy of the country. The 



