Peanut Oil.--Roasted Peanuts.--Peanut Candy.--Peanut Coffee.-- Peanut Chocolate.--Peanut Bread.--Peanut Soap.--Peanuts as a Food for Stock.--Peanut Hay. 55 APPENDIX. A. Statistics. 65 B. Costs. 67 C. The Peanut Garden of America. 67 THE PEANUT PLANT; ITS CULTIVATION AND USES. CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION. =Origin.=--The native country of the Peanut (_Arachis hypogæa_) is not definitely ascertained. Like many other extensively cultivated plants, it has not been found in a truly wild state. Some botanists regard the plant as a native of Africa, and brought to the New World soon after its discovery. Sloane, in his history of Jamaica, states that peanuts formed a part of the provisions taken by the slave ships for the support of the negroes on the voyage, and leaves it to be inferred that the plant was introduced in this manner. De Candolle, in _Géographie Botanique Raisonnée_, and his latter work on _L'Origine des Plantes Cultivées_, strongly inclines to the American origin of the Peanut. The absence of any mention of the plant by early Egyptian and Arabic writers, and the fact that there is no name for it in Sanscrit and Bengalese, are regarded as telling against its Oriental origin. Moreover, there are six other species of _Arachis_, natives of Brazil, and Bentham and Hooker, in their _Genera Plantarum_, ask if the plant so generally grown in warm countries may not be a cultivated form of a Brazilian species. If, as seems probable, the Peanut is really a native of America, then this Continent has contributed to the agricultural world five plants that have exerted, and will continue to exert, an immense influence on the industries and commerce of the world. These are: the Potato, Cotton, Tobacco, Indian Corn, and the Peanut. Of these five, the Peanut, the last to come into general and prominent notice, is destined to rival some of the others in importance. Whatever may have been its origin, the Peanut plant has gradually made its way over an extended area of the warmer parts of both the Old and New World, and in North America has gained a permanent foot-hold in the soil of the South Atlantic and Gulf States. Nor has it yet reached its ultimate limits, for cultivation and acclimation will inure it to a sterner climate, until it becomes an important crop in latitudes considerably further north than Virginia. This is indicated by its rapid spread within the past few years. Remaining long in comparative obscurity, it was not until a recent period that the Peanut gained prominence as an agricultural and commercial staple, but since it fairly started, its progress has been rapid and sure.