ments of speech, so most
certainly did they develop their agriculture from the wild plants of the
fields, the swamps, the hillsides, and the forests. In both respects, as
I have already pointed out, they differed from the Polynesians who
brought with them to their island homes not only their language but
their agriculture, from the cradle of their race in the Malay
Archipelago; cuttings of seedless breadfruit and of sugarcane, fleshy
roots of taro and yams; even trees, like the Indian almond and the
candlenut.

Here I would like to point out to the members of the Nut Growers'
Association the chief difference between nuts and other food staples.
Nearly all of our cultivated vegetables, including maize, beans,
potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and pumpkins, are annuals, sensitive
to frost, which must be raised from seed each year, and which differ so
greatly from the primitive plants from which they came that their
ancestral forms cannot be definitely determined. Most of these
vegetables are in all probability of hybrid origin, the result of cross
pollination and selection. In the case of our native nuts the conditions
are quite different. We know the original ancestor of the pecan, our
hickories and our walnuts. The fine varieties now cultivated are not
hybrids but have been selected from wild trees. In connection with nuts
I would also point out that in all probability they were the most
important food-staple of primitive man, as well as of his simian
ancestors. It required no great intelligence to gather them or to store
them after the fashion followed by squirrels. Intelligence, however, is
required to plant nuts and to transplant nut trees. Still greater
intelligence is involved in the process of preparing certain nuts for
food. A delicious creamy emulsion, for instance, was prepared by the
Virginian Indians from hickory nuts. Cracking them and removing the
kernels was too long and tedious an operation; so they developed a
method of gathering them in quantities and crushing them in a hollowed
log, together with water, pounding them to a paste and then straining
out the fragments of shells through a basket sieve. The milky fluid
which was thus formed was allowed to stand until the thick creamy
substance separated from the water. The water was then poured off, and
the delicious cream which remained was used as a component of various
dishes. This substance was called by the Virginian Algonkian Indians
"_Pawcohiccora_,