50 



CHAPTER III. 



NUTS. 



The vegetable products which are to be described under 

 this chapter are many of them of considerable interest, both 

 from their importance in a commercial point of view, and 

 also from their botanical associations. The ease with which 

 nuts of all kinds can be preserved and transported from 

 place to place, and the agreeable flavour of such as are 

 edible, render them valuable, either as food or as additions 

 to our dessert fruits. Many of them are so familiar as to 

 need scarcely any description, nevertheless the statistics of 

 the commonest sorts are very little known to the public. 

 Who would imagine, upon seeing the little halfpenny piles 

 of those three-cornered nuts called Brazil nuts, lying upon 

 the apple-stalls in the streets, that not less than 50,000 



