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 1. That he thinks there are thirty species of nut-bearing pines to be tried out between Quebec and Florida.

2. One species, the bunya bunya pine, produces nuts the size of the average English walnut. Others grade on down to a nut the size of a grain buckwheat.

3. The pine trees, with their wide array of species, produce nuts with a wide variety of edible qualities. [See table, Appendix.] Some of them are sugary and sweet. The sugar pine, Pinus lambertiana, that lordly timber tree of the Pacific Coast, bears a nut rich in sugar and oil. Its sap evaporates, leaving a solid sugar. Many of the other pine nuts are rich in both protein and fat.

4. Some of them have the quality, less common among the nuts, of furnishing starch. For example, the Araucarias of the southern hemispheres long furnished a starch food to the natives of South America, South Africa, and Australia.

5. Many of the pine nuts are good when eaten either raw or cooked. Starchy varieties must be cooked. Some of the oily kinds may be covered with water and then pressed, thereby yielding a thick, milky substance which can be kept for a long time and which is essentially a substitute for meat.

A few facts about one of these pines may serve to show that this genus merits the attention of the botanical creators.

The piñon, Pinus edulis (also called pinyon), of southwestern America can be seen displaying its virtues to good advantage in the vicinity of Sante Fe, New Mexico, in a climate that is hopeless for agriculture without irrigation and where pasture is of low yielding power. There the piñons raise their beautiful heads and stretch by the thousands across the landscape as far as one can see. The land may be hopeless for agriculture because of the steepness of the slope, but the piñon is perfectly at home on the hill, dry and rocky though it be. For ages the nuts have been a mainstay for the native, furnishing both fat and protein food. They are gathered chiefly by the Indians and Mexicans. When the railroad came, the Indian found a market; and now the pine nuts are shipped by the ton, by the carload, almost by the trainload. The annual value of the harvest amounts to tens of thousands of dollars.