cause the humid summer of our Corn and Cotton Belts keeps the trees growing and producing leaves.
The mulberry has another great use among the Asiatics. It is a food of value for a dense population pressing upon resources more heavily than we do. This fruit has long been an important food in many parts of Western Asia.
"Dried white mulberries, practically, but not quite, seedless and extremely palatable, form almost the exclusive food of hundreds of thousands of Afghans for many months of the year. This use of dried mulberries suggests a new tree food crop.[1] Analysis of these dried mulberries (page 93) shows them to have about the food value of dried figs, and the fig is one of the great nutritive fruits. (See table, page 303.)
Ellsworth Huntington of Yale, geographer and explorer, says that in Syria the troubles of the beggar and the dog are over for a time when mulberries are ripe, for both of these mendicants move under the mulberry tree and pick up their living. "Not only do the people eat large quantities of the fruit, but they also dry it and make a flour out of which a sort of sweetmeat is made."[2]
But I am not urging diet reform for people—only for pigs. They are much more amenable to reason, much more easily pressed by necessity. But, nevertheless, this Afghan dried mulberry[3] seems to be a remarkable food according to the ex-
- ↑ This particular variety, if needed in America, should be expected to thrive in the irrigated lands of our West and Southwest where dry summers and frosty winters somewhat like those of Afghanistan are found.
- ↑ Personal letter.
- ↑ "The dried mulberries form the principal food of the poor people of the mountain districts or 'Koistan.' In the valleys of Koistan and around Kabul there are extensive orchards of this mulberry, all irrigated, and the yield seems to be heavy. There is a howl if you have cut down a mulberry tree. When the mulberries are ripe, they sweep under the trees and let the fruit fall down and dry them just as they do the plums in California. For eight months the peopie live entirely on these mulberries. They grind them and make a flour and mix it with ground almonds. The men come month after month with their shirts filled with them. They can carry in their shirt cnough of these dried mulberries for five days' rations. These men are
