BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. Pas 
One of the most convincing statements as regards the use of 
the bark of conifers is that given by Bayard Taylor.* In speak- 
ing of a famine in Finland, he says: ‘*The younger children 
occupied themselves in peeling off the soft inner bark of the fir 
which they ate ravenously.” 
All of this evidence relating to the bark of coniferous trees 
consists so completely with the fact developed in this laboratory 
that the wood of coniferous trees contains much mannan, that it 
seemed possible that mannan in the bark might be the real source 
of nourishment. 
There is, in fact, an instance where mannan is used as human 
food, namely, in Japan, where the root of Conophallus konnjaku, 
the dry matter of which is said to contain at least fifty per cent. 
of mannan and probably much more, is used in domestic economy. ft 
Both date stones and ivory nut contain large amounts of man- 
nan; and it is a fact that date stones are an approved food for 
camels, and the coarse powder of the ivory nut has been used, 
even in this country, for feeding cattle. Both cattle and sheep 
eat the meal with great relish and fatten upon it.T 
Recently Kellner has argued that in times of dearth fine spruce 
sawdust may well be used to replace straw in the rations of idle 
oxen, and may be regarded as possessing half the food value of 
straw. { 
Gordon Cumming § says: ‘* Squirrels in Scotland do harm by 
eating the bark of coniferous trees within eight or ten feet of the 
* Bayard Taylor, Northern Travel, 1871, p. 98. Bayard Taylor was 
born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1825, and was bred there on his 
father’s farm. ‘There is every reason to believe that his knowledge of trees, 
acquired through the usual training of an American boy of the period, must 
have been accurate. On general principles, it is to be presumed that it was 
superior to that of the ordinary literary writer of travels, and we are speci- 
fically assured by Taylor’s biographers that ‘‘his early acquaintance with 
nature was both minute and general.” It is said that in boyhood he profited 
not a little from the sympathy of one of his teachers — Martin — who took 
long walks with the lad and helped him to a fuller knowledge of tree and 
plant and flower and stone. (Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor. Edited by 
M. H. Taylor and H. E. Scudder, Boston, 1884, 1. p. 12.) 
+ Bulletin of the Bussey Institution, 1897, 2. 396, 397. 
+ Central Blatt fiir Agricultur Chemie, 1895, 24, 164. 
§ C. F. Gordon Cumming, ‘‘Memories,” Edinburgh and London, 1904, 
pp. 389-392. 
