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and confirmatory of the general principles which have been con 

 sidered. There are some of the nuts, notably the chestnut 

 beech-nut, and acorn, in which the percentage of starch ap 

 proaches, though it does not nearly reach, that found in the 

 grains, while the percentage of fat is correspondingly smaller 

 thus the chestnut contains but two to four per cent, of fat, whid 

 is only one-third to one-half that in corn and oats, but with 3c 

 per cent, to 40 per cent, of starch. Now the use of chestnuts foi 

 grinding into flour is a well-established industry, no less thar 

 360,000 tons of them being annually so employed in Italy alone. 

 We thus see that in two of the grains, namely corn and oats, th« 

 characters of the nuts are somewhat approached, and that a simi- 

 lar approach to the grains is made by some of the nuts. 



A third class of seed-like fruits calls for attention in this con- 

 nection. It is a very large class, and one of great importance tc 

 the North American Indians, as well as to other aboriginal peoples. 

 This class is represented best by the sun-flower seed and the hemp 

 seed, so-called, although as stated they are in reality small seed- 

 like fruits. By nearly all writers on anthropology, as well as by 

 travellers generally, these foods have been classed among the 

 grains. The idea is clearly erroneous, having no other basis 

 than the small size of the bodies and the fact that they are 

 pounded or ground up in the same rude mills which are employed 

 by natives in grinding their grains. Both structurally and nutri- 

 tively, their relations are very closely with the nuts, rather than 

 with the grains. In technical botanical language these small, one- 

 seeded, seed-like fruits are known as akenes, and I really do not 

 know that they can be better defined than by calling them very 

 small nuts. They have the same solitary seed, completely filling 

 the ovarian cavity, but not adherent to its walls. If one will kill 

 any of the small birds which fly about fields covered with dead 

 weeds in the fall of the year and examine their stomachs, he will 

 find them gorged with the seeds of the Bidens or beggar-ticks, 

 every one of which the birds have neatly shelled out before swal- 

 lowing them. These beggar-ticks are very closely related to the 

 sun-flower. Nearly all akenes are enclosed, like the nuts, in an 

 involucre of some sort. A very important difference is that their 



