Carobs and Ground-Niits. 3 1 3 



Carobs, the fruit of the Ceratonia Siliqua, also called 

 "Locusts" and "Locust-beans," are the odd-looking 

 purplish-brown and somewhat glossy pods, three to ten 

 inches in length, an inch in width, a third of an inch in 

 thickness, flattened, and often curved, which we see in 

 the very lowest class fruit-shop windows. They contain 

 a considerable quantity of saccharine matter, with some 

 mucilage, and hence are eligible in the manufacture of 

 artificial cattle-food, which owes to them its greenish tint. 

 Freshly gathered they are soft and pulpy, and in all the 

 Levantine countries, also in Spain, Malta, and the north 

 of Africa, are given as food to almost all kinds of animals 

 of draught and burden. They are the Kepana or "husks" 

 which appear in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The 

 tree producing them is a fine evergreen, about thirty feet 

 high, with pinnate leaves, and racemes, about four inches 

 long, of little pink flowers. When in full bearing it yields 

 a weight of about nine hundred pounds annually. The 

 name is the Arabic "al-kharub," whence, in the first 

 place, the Spanish "algaroba." The seeds were the 

 original " carats " of the goldsmiths. 



Ground-nuts, by the pavement-children called "mon- 

 key-nuts," are the legumes of the Arachis hypogcza. 

 Every one knows them by sight buff-coloured, an inch 

 and a half in length, roundish, obtuse, obliquely contracted 

 in the middle, and having the surface netted. Inside the 

 very brittle shell are two or three seeds resembling hazel- 

 nut kernels, tasting like dried peas, and heavily charged 

 with oil. The oil is of considerable value commercially, 



2S 



