BRAZIL NUT 



908 



BREAD 



Brazil is located in the center of the black- 

 coal field of the state. Extensive deposits of 

 clay, shales and bituminous coal are also found 

 here, and the prosperity of the city is largely 

 dependent upon these natural resources. The 

 clay plants employ about 1,000 men, and the 

 annual output exceeds $2,000,000. The machine 

 shops, foundries, boiler works and planing 

 mills all produce large supplies. The surround- 

 ing country is rich in agricultural products, 

 chief among which are corn, wheat, oats, alfalfa 

 and vegetables. About 300,000 bushels of to- 

 matoes are annually used by one industry, in 

 the manufacture of products of this vegetable. 



The buildings of note are the Federal build- 

 ing, erected in 1913 at a cost of $74,000, and a 

 $275,000 courthouse, constructed in the same 

 year. The city has a hospital, a Carnegie 

 Library and a business college. J.B. 



BRAZIL NUT, or PARA NUT, the edible 

 seeds of two species of Brazilian trees, in Amer- 

 ica commonly called nigger-toe or cream-nut. 

 The tree grows as high as 150 feet, and is very 

 abundant along the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. 



BRAZIL NUTS 



(a) A seed vessel of Brazil nut; (6) same, 

 opened, showing the nuts as they are known In 

 the markets of the world. 



The leaves are bright green and leathery, two 

 feet long and six inches wide. The flowers are 

 cream colored; the fruits are round, very hard 

 shelled, about the color of a cocoanut and 

 nearly six inches in diameter. Each fruit con- 

 tains about twenty of the well-known three- 

 sided, wrinkled seeds or nuts, tightly fitted into 

 the shell like the slices of an orange. These 

 nuts are eaten as delicacies, are used for dessert 

 and candies and yield an oil used in oil paint- 

 ing, oiling of delicate machinery, lighting and 

 sometimes for cooking. 



BRAZOS, brah' zose, the largest river of 

 Texas, formed by the junction of two streams 

 called the Clear and Salt forks. It flows south- 

 east by a winding course and empties into the 

 Gulf of Mexico, forty miles southwest of Gal- 

 veston. It has a length of 900 miles and is 

 navigable for 300 miles from the Gulf during 

 periods of unusually high water and at all 

 seasons for forty miles from the Gulf. The 

 commerce it carries is only local. 



BREAD, bred, the most widely-used food of 

 civilized man. For centuries it has been of 

 such overshadowing importance that it has be- 

 come commonly known as the "staff of life." 

 Figuratively, the name is often applied to food 

 in general, as in the Biblical passages, "Give 

 us this day our daily bread," or, "Man shall 

 not live by bread alone," or in the old coup- 

 let- 

 Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead 

 Through which the living Homer begged his 

 bread. 



What Bread Is. People in different ages 

 have meant very different things by the word 

 bread, just as to-day people the world over 

 vary in their ideas as to what this "staff of 

 life" is. But always there is a general resem- 

 blance, in that the principal ingredients are 

 water and some sort of meal or cereal. The 

 loaves may be big and light, brown without 

 and white and flaky within, or they may be 

 little, tough, flat cakes, grayish-white and gritty 

 with ashes; but they are all bread to the 

 people who eat them. 



In the most advanced countries wheat is the 

 common grain for bread, because it makes 

 lighter, better-tasting food, and is more easily 

 digested. The peasants of some countries of 

 Europe, particularly Russia, Austria-Hungary 

 and the Balkan states, still live largely upon a 

 black bread made from rye, while others make 

 their bread of oats. The people of the United 

 States and Canada think that wheat is the 

 world's most important cereal, because it is 

 so to them; but more people are fed on rice 

 than on any other grain, and throughout much 

 of the Orient it is not only boiled whole, but 

 ground up into flour and made into bread. 

 In the United States the people of the South 

 use much corn meal, and in many places when 

 bread is spoken of, it is the corn pone or 

 dodger that is meant, wheat bread going under 

 the name of light bread. 



Many countries have 'their characteristic or 

 "national" kinds of bread, which- are used in 

 addition to the regular wheaten loaves. Thus 

 Scotland has its oat cakes and its bannocks of 

 barley meal; the Central American countries 

 have their tortillas, which are cakes made of 

 crushed and parboiled corn; and the United 

 States and Canada have their hot biscuits. 

 Different conditions, too, call for various kinds 

 of bread. Ships which are to make long voy- 

 ages must have a bread which will keep 

 indefinitely, and to meet this demand, ship's" 

 biscuit, or pilot bread, is made in large quajiti- 



