A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 29 



WalntltS and In tlie Walnuts we have a family kindred to the oaks, 



Peanuts an( l natives of the temperate regions of the old and 



new worlds, affording like the oaks an interesting 



illustration of the fact that similar environments may produce similar forms. 

 They are usually trees of large size, and supply valuable timber as well as 

 palatable nuts. The species best known as supplying the " English " or im- 

 ported nuts is the " Royal " Walnut, known as the common or English Wal- 

 nut. It is a native of Greece, Armenia, Afghanistan, the Northwest Himalayas 

 and Japan. Its nut is well known and appreciated for its thin shell, fine inner 

 skin and abundant kernel. The young fruit is largely used whole for pickling. 

 None of the native American species produce nuts of an equally excellent 

 nature, for the folds of the nut are too woody and too complicated to let the 

 kernel fall out of the shell. It has to be laboriously picked out, while the 

 English Walnut easily falls out in two hemispheres. Hickory nuts, especially 

 the delicious Pecan nut, and the Shellbark or Shagbark, are first cousins, we 

 may say, of the Walnuts. Both Walnuts and Hickory nuts abound in oil. 



What is that which crackles under our feet as we enter the theatre, the 

 concert hall or the stairway to a political gathering ? It is the Peanut. Ver- 

 ily, it reminds one of the parched peas of the Roman amphitheatre of the days 

 of Horace and Juvenal, when the "gods" applauded or condemned in the 

 intervals between the mouthfuls of their favorite esculent. Not that a Peanut 

 is a bad thing, but a five-cent bag of Jhem is rather out of place in the theatre, 

 hall or church. It has several -names Earth-nut, Monkey-nut, Groundnut, 

 Peanut, Manilla-nut; yet it is not a nut at all, botanically, but a pod of a 

 leguminous plant called Arachis hypogea. These pods, which are stalked, 

 oblong and cylindrical, and about an inch in length, containing one or two 

 irregularly ovoid seeds, are produced underground. After the flower withers, 

 the stalk of the seed-vessel has the peculiarity of lengthening and bending 

 down, forcing the young pod beneath the surface, where the seeds are matured. 

 A Clover, called subterranean trefoil, has a like habit. 



The use of the Peanut must date back for centuries. In 1596 it was largely 

 eaten on the banks of the River Maranon, in Brazil. Botanists are undecided 

 as to its native country, some assigning it to Africa, others to America. In 

 nearly all tropical and sub-tropical countries it is used at the present day, not 

 merely for eating, but as a source of oil, of which the seeds yield a large quan- 

 tity. It is of excellent quality and is a good substitute for olive oil in all its 

 uses, although a little more liable to become rancid. 



CuriOUS The curious three-cornered, tasty Brazil nuts are the 



Brazil NutS seeds of a remarkable tree called Bertholletia excelsa, 



belonging to the myrtle order. It attains an immense 



height, being sometimes one hundred feet before a branch spreads forth. These 



