of milk.

Those pessimistic economists who predict that by the year 2000 the
American Continent will be so densely populated that means will have to
be adopted to limit the increase of population because of the scarcity
of foodstuffs, are evidently not aware of the activities of the Nut
Growers Association and of the marvelous efficiency of nut trees as
producers of protein and fats, the two elements of our foodstuffs which
are most costly because hardest to produce.

I am creditably informed that one acre of land supporting 35 black
walnut trees in full bearing, will produce not less than 350 pounds of
walnut meats, each pound of which has a nutritive value in protein and
fats fully four times that of an equal weight of beef or an equivalent
of 1400 pounds of meat. To produce a steer weighing 1600 pounds,
requires two acres and two years. Two acres and two years will produce
1400 pounds of nut meats, the equivalent of 5600 pounds of beef or more
than 9 times the amount of nutritive material in the form of protein and
fat produced by beef raising.

Of course, the question might be raised whether nuts as a source of food
are equal in value to meats, which supply the same sort of food
material, namely, protein and fats. If the anthropologists are right,
this is a question which need not worry us, for, according to Professor
Keith, the eminent English anatomist and a leading paleontologist, and
Professor Elliot, of Oxford, nuts were the chief staple of our hardy
ancestors of prehistoric times. Professor Elliot, indeed, tells us in
his work, "Prehistoric Man," that the first representatives of the human
race who appeared in the Eocene Period were fruit and nut eaters, and
were abundantly supplied with this sort of nutriment. This eminent
author says,--

"On the bushes by the rivers and along the shore there were all sorts of
fruits and nuts. For the subsistence of our lemur-monkey-man in the
early stages of evolution, what fruits would seem _a priori_ most
suitable?

"I think that one would select the banana and bread-fruit. Ancestral
forms of both were flourishing in the Eocene. Many other fruits with
which man has been afterwards continually (perhaps one might venture to
say _most intimately_) associated, occur at this period. These are, most
of them, found in so many places that one is apt to think they were then
of world-wide distribution.

"In the temperate brushwood and on the river-sides, acorns, hazel-nut,
h