The New Student's Reference Work/Acorn

A′corn, fruit of the oak, a nut once considered an important article of food. The ancients thought eating “oaken mast” gave length of years and strength to man. The Indians of New England and farther south ate the acorns of white oaks of several species. The sweet acorn of the California white oak, Indians of the Pacific Coast bake, shell and grind into a coarse meal from which they make bread. Chinese and Japanese use certain acorns for food. Today in some English villages the people hold to the old “right of pannage,” and in autumn turn their hogs into the royal forests to fatten on the fallen acorns.