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Farm animals eat much the greater part of the produce of the American acres. For that reason, we have thus far, in this book, been considering tree crops chiefly suited to feeding domestic animals; but now we come to the consideration of a series of crops which are grown, and should be, primarily for human food. I refer to the nuts. Walnuts, for example, like most other nuts, are a substitute for both meat and butter.

Tables of food analysis (Appendix) show that nuts have more food value than meat, grains, or fruits. Six leading flesh foods average 810 calories per pound. Half a dozen common nut kernels average 3,231 calories, about four times as much. Cereals at 1,650 calories are about half as nutritious as nuts. Fresh vegetables averaging 300 and fruits averaging about 275 calories per pound are less than a tenth as nutritious as nut meats.

The quality of nut food is also of the very highest. Early food chemists called nut protein "vegetable casein," because of its close resemblance to the protein of milk. When the Chinese mother's milk fails, her babe is fed on milk made of boiled water and the paste of ground walnut, Juglans regia.

P. W. Wang, curator, Kinsman Arboretum, Chuking, Kiangsu Province, China, says (1922 Proceedings of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, p. 120):