THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD 



comfortably in a vessel kept in motion over a slow 

 fire, as peanuts are heated. Not only is the flavor 

 improved thereby, but the sweetness of the kernel 

 is ensured for a longer time. 



The value of the pinou was quickly recognized by 

 the Spanish conquerors of New Mexico, and Fray 

 Alonzo de Benavides in his famous Memorial to the 

 King of Spain (1630) makes particular mention of 

 the Pihon trees, marvelous to him '^because of their 

 nuts so large and tender to crack and the trees and 

 cones so small and the quantity so interminable.'* 

 It seems that at that early day there was trade in 

 New Mexico pinons with the Mexican capital, a 

 thousand miles away, where, Benavides tells us, they 

 were worth at wholesale twenty-three to twenty-four 

 pesos the fanega. They retail to-day in city shops 

 of our Southwest at about twenty cents per pound. 



In taking leave of the pines, a word should be said 

 about the fruits of their cousins, the Junipers of 

 familiar habit. Although reckoned as a conifer, the 

 Juniper bears seed vessels that are not cones in 

 the popular acceptance of that word, but berry-like, 

 due to the growing together of the fleshy cone- 

 scales, with a compact pulp around the seeds. The 

 resinous quality of these ^* berries" in most species 

 i-enders them repugnant to the human palate, but in 



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