NUSAIRIEIL NO8SAIRIANS or ANsostnics. See ANSARIE.
NUT, in popular language, is the mine given to all those Milts have the seed inclosed m a bony, woody, or leathery ncsz opening when ripe. • Amongst the best known and most valuable nuts are the hazel-nut, Brazil nut; walnut, chestnut, and cocoa-nut, all of which are edible. Other nuts are used in medicine, and for purposes ,connected with the arts. Some of the edible puts abound in a bland oil, which is used for various purposes.—In botany the term nut (nux) is used to designate a one-celled fruit, with a hardened pericarp, containing, when mature, only one seed. The ae/tenium (q.v.) was by the older botanists generally included in this term. Some of the fruits to which it is popularly applied scarcely receive it as their popular designation. The hazel nut is an excellent example of the true nut of botanists.—The name nut, without distinc tive prefix, is popularly given in Britain to the hazel-nut, but in many parts of Europe to the walnut.
Many nuts have a considerable commercial value, from their being favorite articles of food; these are the hazel-nut and its varieties, the black Spanish, the Barcelona, the Smyrna, the Jerusalem filbert, and the common filbert; the walnut, chestnut, hickory, and pecan; the sounri, the cocoa or coker nuts, and the Brazil or Para nut.
The Barcelona and black Spanish, as their names imply, are from Spain; the former is the commonest nut of our shops. About 120,000 bags, averaging 1+ bushel each, or
150,000 bushels, are annually imported into Great Britain. The import value is about 33s. per bag. They are always kiln-dried when we receive them. This is not the ease with the black Spanish, of which only about 12,500 three-bushel bags, or about 37,000 bush els, are imported in the beginning of the season, when their value is about 14s. per bushel. From the Black sea we receive annually about 68,000 bushels of hazel-nuts, worth 10s. per bushel, with from 500 to 1000 bags of the so-called Jerusalem and Mount Atlas fil berts. Of chestnuts, from Leghorn, Naples, Spain, France, and Portugal, we receive annually about 20,000 bushels. The trade in walnuts is very uncertain, and probably never exceeds 5,0M bushels. Of the curious three-cornered or Brazil nut from Pain and Maranham, the importation is also very irregular, varying from 300 to 1000 tons, or 1200 to 4,000 bushels per annum. About two millions of cocoa-nuts are also imported. The other kinds of nuts are too irregular in their importations to supply any reliable sta tistics. The annual value of all the nuts imported for use as fruit is computed at about £153,000.