INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT 



ALL the familiar vegetables and fruits of our 

 kitchen gardens, as well as the cereals of our 

 fields, were once wild plants; or, to put it more ac- 

 curately, they are the descendants, improved by 

 cultivation and selection, of ancestors as untamed in 

 their way as the primitive men and women who first 

 learned the secret of their nutritiousness. Many of 

 these — as, for example, the potato, Indian corn, cer- 

 tain sorts of beans and squashes, and the tomato — 

 are of New World origin; and the purpose of this 

 volume is to call attention to certain other useful 

 plants, particularly those available as a source of 

 human meat and drink, that are to-day growing wild 

 in the woods, waters and open country of the United 

 States. Though now largely neglected, many of 

 these plants formed in past years an important 

 element in the diet of the aborigines, who were 

 vegetarians to a greater extent than is generally 

 suspected, and whose patient investigation and in- 

 genuity have opened the way to most that we know 

 of the economic possibilities of our indigenous flora. 

 White explorers, hunters and settlers have also, at 



