in the last fifty years been
laid waste by deforestation. The planting of nut trees along all the
public highways of the country would in less than twenty years result in
a crop, the food value of which would be greater than that at present
produced by the entire livestock industry of the country.

The high price of meat of which so much complaint has been made in
recent years is not likely to recede. The high price is not due to
manipulations of the market, but to natural causes, the chief of which
is the limitation of pasturage and is the consequence of a decrease in
the number of livestock. As the country becomes more and more densely
settled, the difficulty of supplying the demand for meat will increase,
and in time the necessity for utilizing every foot of ground in the most
efficient manner, will necessarily bring about a change in the dietetic
habits of the people. Not a single example can be found in the world of
a densely populated country dependent upon its own resources in which
flesh foods constitute any considerable part of the national bill of
fare. Since Germany has been nearly shut off from the outside world by
the present war, the government has found it necessary to restrict the
consumption of meat to one-half pound per week for each adult. All other
European countries are equally dependent on outside sources for their
meat supply.

The time will certainly come when nuts and nut trees will become a most
important food resource. If a reform in this direction could be effected
within the next ten years, the result would be a disappearance to a
large extent of the complaint of the high cost of living. Mr. Hill said
the basis for complaint was not the high cost of living, but the cost of
high living. I should prefer to say that the real cause for complaint
was wrong living rather than high living, or necessarily high cost. With
right living the cost will be automatically reduced. For example,
suppose a person were content to choose the peanut as his source for
protein and fat, the elimination of the butcher's bill for meat and the
grocer's bill for butter would at once cut out two-thirds of the expense
incurred for food.

When a student in college more than forty years ago, I was already
making dietetic experiments and lived three months on a diet such as I
have suggested, at an average expense of exactly six cents a day. This
was the total amount expended for raw foodstuffs. I paid my landlady
five tim