en fertilized with phosphate and
the third with potash. The one fertilized with phosphate appeared
slightly larger, but it can again be observed that all three trees were,
at the time the picture was taken, nearly three-fourths defoliated. The
next two trees from the same experiment, fertilized respectively with a
nitrogenous fertilizer and with a complete fertilizer, and photographed
at the same time, show the influence of these fertilizers strikingly in
that they are still in complete foliage, as well as showing a more
vigorous growth. Three slides of fertilized and unfertilized trees from
still different experiments all show the fuller foliage and better
branching of the fertilized trees, especially those fertilized with the
nitrogenous fertilizers or the complete fertilizers.

The yields of these trees cannot here be taken up but, in general, these
fertilized trees came into bearing earlier and have yielded double and
treble the number of nuts produced by the unfertilized trees.

(In conclusion, there was shown a slide of the yield of nuts from an
experimental tract of a commercial orchard of about 20 acres, in which
the yield from a fertilized acre was compared with the yield from an
unfertilized acre. It was noted that the unfertilized acre gave a yield
of approximately two barrels, whereas the fertilized acre gave an
increase of two bushel baskets more than the unfertilized.)

Dr. W. E. Safford, Botanist, Bureau of Plant Industry, then spoke on the
Use of Nuts by the Aboriginal Americans.

DR. SAFFORD: My interest in nuts has been confined almost entirely to
those of American origin. For a good many years, I have been studying
the plants, and plant products, utilized for food, and for other
purposes, by the aboriginal Americans, before the arrival in this
hemisphere of Columbus and his companions.

In this connection, there is a striking contrast between the American
Indians and the primitive Polynesians. The chief economic plants
encountered by early explorers on the islands of the Pacific Ocean were
identical with well known Asiatic species. Coconuts, breadfruit, taro,
sugar cane, yams and bananas, the most important food staples of the
Polynesians, had been known to the Old World for centuries before the
Pacific Islands were visited by Europeans; the shrub, from the bark of
which the Polynesians made their tapa cloth, was identical with the
paper mulberry of China and Japan; and the principal screwpine, or