Kindly Fruits
The nation's supply of food, and especially of vitamins—whatever they may be—was increased last year by the processing of 500 tons of hips, mostly gathered by village women and children. A food-analyst has put to me this question: "If hips, why not haws?" Hips and haws go as sweetly together as, say, spick and span ; and the haw, it is argued, is meatier, fuller of solid food than the hip ; and though its inherent vitamins may be X, Y, Z instead of P, Q, R, it is certainly nutritious and rich, in that other blessed word of the day, in calories. Many years ago an economic epicure deplored "the wicked waste involved in the spectacle of great big snails crawling about unmolested and uneaten" ; and, indeed, we neglect a large number of animals and plants that are supplied gratis. The list might run: mushrooms, grey squirrels, dandelion and sorrel leaves, pig nuts, 'acorns, nuts and a host of berries. While not going so far as the snail-loving epicure, I Would confess that we ought to use a deal more of the wild fruits, esoecially acorns and hips, as fodder if not as food. Thrifty folk such as the Italian peasant (who sets store by daisies as a salad plant) could make good the deficiency in the supply of pig and poultry fodder by picking hips and haws and gathering acorns. Certainly those 500 tons of hips have proved a highly valued addition to our rations. The pulpy juice has been used freely as a sweetener.
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