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tributed almost entirely by Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and North 
Carolina, Virginia ranking first in its production. Notwithstanding 
this large amount supplied to our market and the high nutritient 
value of the seed, the peanut is nowhere used in the United States 
as an article of food—as it is used in other countries. Some effort 
has been made, however, to show how valuable it would prove if 
so utilized. In Germany experiments have been made with refer- 
ence to adopting it as an article of diet for the army; and it is 
said to be already in use there as a dietetic treatment for diabetes. 
The following analysis is taken from statistics furnished by 
German authorities and will serve to show what valuable proper- 
erties it posesses as a food constituent: 
Water,. . 7.85 Fibre, . . 4.29 
As. C EAT Pat. . 49.20 
Protein, . . 29.47 Nitrogen, 4.67 
The oil of this fruit is used as a substitute for olive oil, which 
it much resembles, and to which it is even sometimes preferred. 
It is also used as a lubricant and in the manufacturing of toilet soap. 
Notwithstanding the fact that the fruit of Avachis formed so 
important an article of commerce and that, on account of its 
utilitarian value, it was so widely cultivated, it has been correctly 
described only in comparatively recent times. 
Piso, writing in 1658, says only of the flower that it is small 
and yellow, and states that the fruit originates on the root-fibres. 
The later botanists up to the year 1805 all described the structure 
of the flower erroneously. The long stem-like calyx was assumed 
to be a flower stalk even by those botanists who had access to the 
living plants. In 1805 Poiteau published the first correct descrip- 
tion of the structure of the flower. Robert Brown afterward con- 
firmed Poiteau's description in the appendix to Tuckey's Narra- 
tion of an Expedition to the Zaire,in 1816. Notwithstanding the 
work of Poiteau, Bentham as late as 1839 writes of Arachis as a 
plant with dimorphous flowers. Oneform, with calyx and corolla, 
Which are always sterile, the fertile flowers having * neither calyx, 
corolla nor stamens, but from between two bracteolae, similar to 
those which are found at the base of the sterile flowers proceeds 
a stiff rigid stipe or torus, which is speedily reflexed and elongated, 
