hazel (Corylus avellana) from Europe for grafting purposes. We therefore
are obliged to raise our own stock. This can well be done by sowing the
seed or nuts or by layering of European varieties, we are in possession
of. I have among my imported varieties several of which the fruit or
nuts are too small and not at all satisfactory for commercial purposes,
those varieties I am layering with that point in view to use them for
stock to graft upon only. Such stock can also easily be grown from seed
or nuts. It has for me so far not been necessary to grow seedlings, as I
had stock enough from layers to graft upon, but have found any number of
seedlings on my ground from nuts dropped from the plants and not
gathered or destroyed by mice or squirrels so I know the seed or nuts
will readily grow. Nuts can be sown in the fall quite successfully
providing they are safe from mice, otherwise they should be stratified
and kept from freezing during the winter. I will leave this subject now
and call attention to the hazel or filbert orchard. If the planting of
such an orchard is planned, the soil and location should be well
considered. Ordinary farm land well worked and fairly well manured and
not too wet will answer the purpose, providing it is an open piece of
land well exposed to sun and air, as the hazel-nut requires both and a
good deal of it in order to perfectly mature its' fruit.
In planting the orchard, three or four varieties should be used on
account of better pollenization and plants about three to four years old
planted. Varieties that naturally grow more conical or pyramidal shaped
could be planted about 12 feet apart each way, but the more spreading
varieties like the Lamberts and others I would advise to plant 15 feet
apart each way, as part of the land between the rows can well be
utilized for low growing crops for several years to come and thereby
prevent the waste of land. It is not necessary to plant an equal number
of each kind, if three or four varieties are chosen for the orchard, we
may select say two very prolific kinds and add a few plants of other
varieties to mix in for pollenization, which will fully answer the
purpose. Before going any further with my talk on hazel or filbert
orchards, I should emphatically recommend the thoroughly working and
preparing of the ground, as it is a very essential part of the operation
and a necessity to the final success. It is a mistaken idea that a hazel
orchard will take care of itself, the ground should be well cultivated
and kept free of grass and weeds. Barnyard manure or other fertilizers
should be resorted to whenever the ground shows a necessity thereof,
neither trees or fruit can be grown successfully on poor and exhausted
soil. All filberts or hazel plants are naturally inclined to produce a
number of suckers or young shoots grown from the root, they should be
removed as soon as they appear, it will stop when the plants grow older.
Standard trees with a short stem say 10 to 15 inches should be planted
in the orchard, if such plants could be had. It should be our aim to try
to grow and prune them with that point in view to raise such plants, as
they are then easily taken care of. This actually brings us to the
operation of pruning our hazel plants, which is in every way quite an
important part of the growing of hazel nuts. At the time of planting all
plants should be cut back, the same as is done to any shrub or tree when
newly planted, but after that the hazel being more a shrub than a tree
should be pruned every year with the center well kept open all the time,
all weak and unnecessary wood or branches in the middle of the plant
should not be cut back but entirely removed, also the young growth of
most of the branches should be removed to just below the terminal bud of
the previous years growth, as I will show you on a branch I have brought
with me.
If we will treat the plants in our hazel orchards as herein described we
should not experience any difficulty in raising a fairly good crop of
nuts, if the proper varieties are selected. Insects have so far not
troubled in the least, a few tent caterpillars appeared in its season,
but were soon destroyed by birds. We should not allow our hazel plants
to grow too tall, 12 to 15 feet should be the maximum height, after that
the tall growing branches should be greatly reduced, or gradually
removed, as there is generally young growth enough to take their places.
During the severe winter of 1919 and '20 most all catkins or staminate
blossoms above the snowline in our nursery were frozen, also part of the
wood of a few varieties were more or less frozen, of which due notice
has been taken. They will be closely observed during the coming winter.
Only a few of the staminate blossoms that were well covered under snow
developed perfectly and the result was a very small crop of nuts on most
of the varieties, but all the varieties had some, even those more or
less frozen plants. It plainly shows that but a very few catkins are
necessary for pollenization, even over a wide area. There will be
failures caused by climatic or atmospheric disturbances in our hazel
orchards as well as in all other orchards which we cannot control nor
prevent, but that should not discourage us as long as the prospects of
fair crops are otherwise all right, the selecting of varieties, the
proper pruning of our plants, the control of insects and the location of
our hazel orchard is all in our power and should, if properly exercised,
almost guarantee a fair crop and insure a fair profit from each acre so
planted, providing the proper varieties are selected. Before coming to a
close with my paper it seems to me justice is not quite done to the
hazel proposition if I would not mention the beauty and pleasure
thereof, the beautiful appearance of an hazel orchard and the pleasure
and enjoyment it affords us, not from a financial point of view only in
gathering the nuts, etc., but from other sources as well. No other
orchard will in a comparatively short time appear more like a natural
grove than the hazel on account of its characteristic compact growth and
dense foliage, so attractive and inviting to our song and other
insectivorous birds for hatching and rearing their young, the constant
warbling of the different birds from early spring until late in summer,
the building of their nests, the feeding of the young, all affords
endless pleasure and enjoyment to the close observer. Now October is
here, quietness reigns in field and forest, also in the hazel orchards
birds are silent, a number of them departed for warmer climates, others
ready to leave us, butterflies and other insects have disappeared, nuts
have been gathered, and the leaves are falling, death, decaying and
destruction seems to be dominating all around us, but our hazel
orchard, though remarkably changed, still retains a certain part of its
former beauty as the little catkins the staminate blossoms now become
more conspicuous, an ornament to any catkin bearing tree throughout the
winter, and a pleasure to look upon. There is no reason for
discouragement, nature is not dead, only at rest, where we see death and
destruction, nature in reality celebrates a new beginning.
The close examination of our hazel orchard at this time will fully
convince us that vegetation is still alive and active. Examine the
leafless limbs, notice the beautiful staminate blossoms, notice back of
the falling leaves the life, the thrifty little bud, a sure and positive
promise of a coming spring with the early pistillate hazel blossoms, a
great consolation and a great source of pleasure and enjoyment to all.
Why not combine profit, beauty and pleasure? Why not plant a hazel or
filbert orchard?
MR. JONES: I would like to ask Mr. Vollertsen if he has tried layering
the two years growth and rooting the one year branches thereon instead
of layering the one year growth. The one year shoots would no doubt make
larger plants at one year but you get a larger number of plants by
layering the two years growth and rooting the branches.
MR. VOLLERTSEN: I have found that these smaller plants will be better
plants.
MR. JONES: What About rooting these and then transplanting. Don't you
suppose you gain by rooting those and transplanting in a year.
MR. VOLLERTSEN: If these were all apart each and every one would make a
good plant. I know from experience that they will grow faster a great
deal faster than these long roots. There is a plant that has been
planted one year from a layer. It is a one year growth. This is a
two-year.
THE SECRETARY: I would like to ask Mr. Vollertsen if the soil makes a
difference in the way in which they grow. That is if a sandy soil or a
clay soil is better adapted.
MR. VOLLERTSEN: Well I must say if we had sandy loam the plant would
grow better and it is more easily worked. Too heavy a soil is not so
good.
PROF. CLOSE: I would like to ask Mr. Vollertsen what method of grafting
he prefers and just when he would like to do it; if he has any choice of
time and also the method of budding and the method of treating the bud.
MR. VOLLERTSEN: We really should have the common European variety to
graft on. Though these are a little small we do graft on them and they
do grow well.
PROF. CLOSE: Do you whip graft or cleft graft?
MR. VOLLERTSEN: Either way they grow easily.
DR. MORRIS: I would like to make one remark. I have grafted hazels using
the paraffine method from April until September, every month between
April and September and have had them grow. The ones I grafted in
September were winter killed but up to the sixth of September we have
had them pull through the winter.
THE PRESIDENT: I do not desire to be placed in the bragging class but as
a Michigander several things have been brought to my notice very
recently that cause me to take pride in Michigan. As I landed in the
fine central station in Washington it occurred to me that a senator from
Michigan, James McMillan, had caused the old railroad stations in the
District of Columbia to be cleaned out and the fine new depot
established in place of them. For his good work one of Washington's
parks bears his name. The plans for the new Union Station were prepared
by Mr. Spencer, an engineer from Michigan. Passing the Senate Office
building I realized that another Michigan Senator, Senator Charles E.
Townsend, was at the head of the national road movement in the United
States, being chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads,
fully in accord with the tree planting plan that we have mapped out to
be carried on on the public highways throughout the United States.
Picking up the program showing what our work might be at this
convention, I find five Michiganders noted thereon, a fair proportion of
the program. Picking up the morning paper, if you please, you will find
that Michigan has been advanced in population beyond the other states.
You will find that our city of Detroit has passed a number of other
great cities, going from tenth place to fourth, becoming one of the four
cities of the United States with a million inhabitants. So you see we
have a prosperous state. And we have good men in Michigan that have
helped to make it so. Going into a railroad station in a Western city
within the past two or three weeks this occurred. The morning paper had
stated that the candidate of a great political party to the presidency
of the United States was on a train that had been ditched, that the
engineer had been severely injured and a number of others on the train;
that the distinguished candidate himself had been badly jarred and might
possibly have been injured. An hour or two after this first report came
from this accident the news boys were calling on the streets: "Extra,
extra." Naturally we thought it would be a continuation of news relative
to this railroad accident and immediately I purchased a paper. What do
you suppose its heading was? In great type three inches high: "Henry
Ford has reduced the price of automobiles." Henry Ford perhaps is the
best known Michigan citizen today and when we get the river and harbor
appropriation that my good friend Dr. Morris referred to not long ago
you will see the Washington steamers going up the St. Lawrence River and
loading at the seaport of Detroit, carrying out the products of
Michigan, we will hope the cargoes of nuts to which he referred. But
next to Henry Ford I am sure that the best-known citizen of Michigan
today is the next speaker upon the program. He needs no introduction to
you. He is one of the pioneers of this movement and in my opinion has
done more than any other man in this day and age to promote health, to
promote good morals and to benefit the race in many ways along the lines
that he has chosen. I take great pleasure in presenting Dr. Kellogg of
Battle Creek, Michigan. (Applause).
DR. KELLOGG: Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, I fear I cannot
qualify in all of the good things which your chairman has said about me.
I am glad to be from Michigan. I assure you I am greatly interested in
the work of this association. I admire immensely the perseverance of the
members of this association. I am not to any extent a nut grower
although I have nuts planted in my garden and hope that my heirs will
reap the fruit of my trees. I went into the business rather too late. I
have been so busy all my life that I did not have time to do some
things. But I am very greatly interested in increasing the consumption
of nuts. I have been popularizing the idea of nut consumption and making
it a staple article of food for almost fifty years, and I have been
continually faced with this objection that if we get all the people
eating nuts there would not be enough nuts for them to eat. That is
really the situation. There is not much use to increase the demand for a
thing unless we can supply the demand. So I am very much interested in
the production of nuts.
NUTS NEEDED AS SUPPLEMENTARY FOODS
DR. J. H. KELLOGG, BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN
The nut is the oldest and best of Nature's products intended as food for
man. The paleontologists tell us that early man was a nut eater as are
the gorilla, the orang-ou-tang, and the chimpanzee, his modern
prototypes.
Elliot, an eminent English anthropologist, tells us in his interesting
volume, "Prehistoric Man," that "there was not, so far as we are aware,
any carnivorous creature in the Eocene period."
Elliot also tells us that walnuts, almonds and palm nuts were produced
in great quantities in the forests of the ancient world
contemporaneously with the lemur-monkey man, who had then made his
appearance in what is now northeastern North America, the first land to
rise out of the ancient ocean. From the facts set forth by Elliot
showing that all the higher mammals were originally vegetable feeders,
as well as from his biological affinities with the anthropoids with
which man forms the family of primates, it is evident that man is so
constituted that he may if he chooses, select his entire bill of fare
from the vegetable kingdom. That this may be done successfully, that is,
that a man may live on a diet, no part of which is drawn from the animal
kingdom, has been abundantly proven. The experience of many millions of
human beings in India and other Oriental countries who abstain from the
use of flesh on religious grounds, and to whom cow's milk is almost a
novelty, is a practical demonstration of the fact that the vegetable
kingdom is able to supply to human beings everything required for
complete nutrition.
It is true that some years ago Slonaker, of Leland Stanford University,
in an animal feeding experiment in which one group of rats was fed a
mixed diet and the other exclusively on food stuffs of vegetable origin,
found that his vegetable feeding rats, although for a few weeks showing
themselves superior to the mixed feeders later developed unmistakable
evidence of malnutrition and physical inferiority.
Some years later, however, McCollum of Johns Hopkins, then of Wisconsin
University, demonstrated conclusively that by making a proper selection
of vegetable foodstuffs, rats may live and thrive indefinitely on a diet
wholly derived from the vegetable kingdom. In connection with this and
other similar experiments, McCollum made the interesting discovery that
when an animal's bill of fare is to be wholly drawn from the products of
plant life it is necessary, in order that the animal shall be fully
nourished, that all parts of the plant should be eaten. His experiments
demonstrated that if animals are fed upon seeds, alone they undergo
physical depreciation, do not obtain full growth, are unable to
reproduce or nourish their kind, and ultimately perish. In like manner,
roots are found to be incapable of bringing an animal to full
development and sustaining its life indefinitely. It was found that to
be well nourished the animal must eat in suitable proportions, variable
within considerable limits, seeds or fruits and leaves. The great
importance of the green leaf as a complement of other foods has been
clearly shown.
Experiments by McCollum, as well as those of Osborne, Mendel, and
numerous other investigators in the same line of research, have made
clear several new and highly important facts in the physiology of
feeding.
They find that foods contain certain subtle elements known as vitamines
which are absolutely essential to the full development and prolonged
life of an animal. These elements are not found equally distributed in
the parts of plants and animals. In seeds they are found chiefly in the
outer layers or envelope which is commonly rejected as bran. A certain
vitamine especially concerned with growth and development, the fat
soluble B, is found in the green leaf along with lime and iron, all of
which are deficient in seeds. Roots especially supply an abundance of
alkaline salts which are highly necessary to balance up an excess of
mineral acids found in seeds.
Ignorance respecting these highly important facts has been responsible
for a great number of failures in attempts to adopt a non-flesh dietary.
A diet consisting of cereals and fruits, as for example a bread and
fruit diet, while apparently satisfactory for a brief period, must
inevitably result in failure because of lack of lime, iron and special
vitamines found in the green leaf. The same deficiency exists in flesh
foods. The soft parts of an animal, fat and lean meat, are almost wholly
lacking in lime and vitamines. They contain a great excess of mineral
acids. Even a carnivorous animal fed on such a diet soon shows evidence
of failure. The lime in the animal body is found almost wholly in the
bones, and the vitamines are concentrated in the liver and other glands,
so that in the case of flesh foods, as well as vegetable foods, for
complete nutrition it is necessary that the whole animal or its
essential parts should be eaten. Wild carnivorous animals do this as do
also wild men who live largely upon flesh foods. The cave men crushed
and ate the bones of the animals upon which they fed, and the Indian
tribes of Texas and the Northwest have long practiced the grinding up of
the bones of fishes to eat with their food.
Dr. Treves, one of London's most eminent surgeons was called upon by the
head keeper of the animals of the London Zoological garden for advice
respecting the condition of the lions. It was noted that the cubs bred
in captivity were club-footed and variously deformed, and in many cases
were either born dead or survived but a few weeks. His investigation
showed that the fault was wholly in the diet. The lions received only
the soft parts, lean and fat, of animals. When given bones and bone meal
the difficulty speedily disappeared. Stefansson reports that, when
living upon an Eskimo diet it is necessary to take the whole bill of
fare, including the raw frozen liver of the seal, otherwise serious
illness intervenes.
Hindhede, by arranging a dietary based upon these principles, has
demonstrated that a man may be perfectly sustained on a diet which
contains no animal product of any sort. In a letter received by the
writer from this able Danish physiologist, the statement is made that a
strong laboring man was maintained for 23 months in perfect health and
vigor on a diet into which no animal products entered.
Another important fact developed by Rubner, Mendel, McCollum and other
investigators which is of fundamental importance in animal nutrition, is
that proteins differ in their value as tissue builders. Proteins differ
from the starches and fats in the great complexity of their composition.
Instead of being simple compounds or mixtures of a few simple compounds,
proteins, as found in nature, consist of several sorts of highly complex
molecules which vary greatly in their composition.
The protein molecule is made up of a number of organic units known as
amino acids. There are 30 or 40 different kinds of amino acids of which
less than 20 enter into the formation of the proteins of the human body.
These 18 or 20 different amino acids are absolutely essential for the
formation of body proteins, and are produced by plants, hence if they
are not found in the food the body cannot produce them and the material
necessary for tissue building or repair will be lacking.
Proteins which contain all the amino acids essential for tissue building
are known as complete proteins. Other proteins, lacking in certain
essential constituents, are designated as incomplete: Flesh foods
necessarily furnish complete proteins. The proteins of milk and eggs are
also complete proteins. The proteins met in the vegetable world are
exceedingly varied in character. Each species of plant produces its own
kind of proteins. Vegetable proteins differ greatly among themselves.
Complete proteins are comparatively rare. The proteins of cereals, for
example, have been shown to be deficient in some of the essential amino
acids. The deficiency is still greater in the proteins of beans. In
fact, the proteins of vegetable foods in general may be said to be
deficient.
The necessity for providing the body with complete proteins was
doubtless the original cause which led men under circumstances of
privation and emergency to resort to the use of animal flesh for food.
The cows of Nantucket, the ponies of Alaska, and I have recently been
informed by Mr. Goddard, curator of anthropology in the American Museum
of Natural History, the rabbits of northern Canada, in times of great
scarcity of food, also resort to the eating of flesh. The necessity for
complete protein to maintain physical fitness is so great that animals
by nature the farthest removed from the carnivorous class resort to
flesh eating when this is the only source of the needed element.
But what bearing has all this upon the dietetic use of nuts? The
relation is very direct and very important. The situation developed as a
result of the World War made very clear to everybody how close the world
has arrived to the point where the careful economizing of our food
resources will be absolutely necessary. The rapid increase of the
world's population which has occurred, especially within the last two
centuries, is a hew world experience. Two hundred years ago the average
length of human life was less than 20 years, as it still is in Mexico
and some other parts of the world where the life-saving influence of
modern sanitation and health conservation have not had an opportunity to
exercise their influence. In former times great epidemics devastated
whole continents so frequently that the world's population barely held
its own from century to century. In many instances whole tribes were
wiped out. Such catastrophes are now almost unknown, although we still
have with us the plagues of influenza, tuberculosis, syphilis, and
pneumonia. Even these, however, are being conquered, so that their
destructive influence is being stayed.