The New York Botanical Garden 



Several considerations have led to the selection of the nuts and 



products of the United States, for association in this lecture. 



As parts of the plant, these two products are closely related, 

 both structurally and physiologically. The plants which pro- 

 duce them have a gregarious habit and the flowers of both are 

 wind-pollinated. The latter are in both cases devoid of a true 

 corolla and both are enclosed in an involucre of some sort. In 

 both, also, the percentage of nutriment in the seed is veiy large 

 and its quality is high. For this reason both are admirably 

 adapted to human use as staple foods and have been so employed 

 upon an extensive scale. In this particular, however, we take 

 note of some important differences between them. The grains 

 have been enormously used as staple foods by civilized nations, 

 something which is just beginning to be true of the nuts. For 

 this there are two reasons. The first is the obvious difficulty in 

 separating the kernel of the nuts from the shell. The second 

 is the fact that neither class, in the original wild state, possesses 

 all the characters requisite in a food for the nations. In order 

 that they shall acquire these characters, they must be improved 

 by selection and breeding. This is a very simple matter in such 

 plants as the grains, where the life of the generation is but one or 



