It is interesting to note that a similar creamy or butter-like substance was derived by a similar process from various palm nuts in Central and South America. Cieza de Leon describes such a process in his Chronicle of Peru, in connection with a nut which was described as _Cocos butyraceæ_, but which was not a true _Cocos_, or coconut. Long before the discovery of America, a somewhat similar process was used in the Nicobar Islands for extracting a creamy substance from the grated kernel of the true coconut, _Cocos nucifera_, which in early times was called _Nux indica_. This process is still followed throughout Polynesia. Some of the most savory dishes of the Samoans and the natives of Guam are enriched and flavored with this coconut cream, which is a substance quite distinct from the water, or so-called milk, contained in the hollow kernel of the nut, which is so commonly used for drinking.
Coming back to America, I would call attention to the value of some of our native pine nuts and acorns as food staples. Certain Indian tribes of the Southwest live upon pine nuts at certain seasons when they are ripe. Dr. C. Hart Merriam has told of the utilization of acorns by various tribes of Indians in a beautifully illustrated article published in the National Geographic Magazine, 1918, entitled "The Acorn, a Possibly Neglected Source of Food." "To the native Indians of California," he says, "the acorn is, and always has been, the staff of life, furnishing the material for their daily mush and bread." He describes the process of gathering and storing them, shelling, drying, grinding the kernels, leaching out the bitter tannic acid, and preparing the acorn meal in various ways for food. In eastern North America, several species of acorns were somewhat similarly used, including those of the live oaks of our southern states. The Spaniards of Florida sometimes toasted them and used them as a substitute for chocolate or coffee. Chinkapins were used for food by the earliest English colonists. They are mentioned by Herriot, the historian of Sir Walter Raleigh's colony at Roanoke. In addition to these, the early colonists learned to eat the so-called "water-chinkapins", which are fruits of the beautiful golden-flowered American lotus, _Nelumbo lutea_, a plant closely allied to the sacred lotus of India, China and Japan, whose nuts are even now used as a food staple. The split kernels of the latter may be bought in the Chinese shops on Pennsylvania Avenue in this city. The rootstocks of both the American and the Oriental lotus are also used for food. They resemble bananas joined together end to end, with several hollow longitudinal tubes running through them.