8 NUT GROWING 



to farmers as the "running out 9 ' of any given va- 

 riety of cultivated plant or animal. Civilized man 

 is a cultivated animal, and his varieties in nations 

 run out. This particular fact allows us to look with 

 equinimity upon the food supply question, knowing 

 as we do that all men whom this earth is capable 

 of producing may be well fed for all time, while one 

 nation after another is running out. 



The question of food supply will relate only to 

 the way of living something quite remediable when 

 found to be unsatisfactory for any large group of 

 people. 



Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes commenting upon the 

 Malthusian doctrine spoke of the time when we 

 would all be sitting in each other's laps because of 

 the lack of room. He did not know about the 

 apsedion index to the decline of nations, or in sim- 

 pler words, the dropping of the birth rate. Pro- 

 fessor J. Russell Smith in the humor of Dr. Holmes 

 has introduced the idea of his three-story garden 

 for congested population areas. There are to be 

 nut and fruit trees over the garden. The ground 

 floor will be devoted to ordinary annual crops and 

 in the cellar underneath the garden there is to be a 

 bed of mushrooms. We need not become unduly 

 uncomfortable concerning the question of over-pop- 

 ulation because the law of cultural limitation will 

 attend to the matter thoroughly. Nations will come 

 and go as they have come and gone in previous cul- 

 tural periods. 



The way of living of each nation determines not 



