Edible Products. 



154 



[March 1907. 



they possessed one, as well as Senegal sent increasing quantities to Marseilles' year 

 by year. Other parts of Africa commenced to export nuts notably Algeria, Sierra 

 Leone, and Angola. Pondicherry, too, began to send shipments, and the trade 

 thence received a great stimulus by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. 



Some idea of the growth of the trade may be obtained from the statement 

 that ten or twelve years after the first importation the output of Marseilles had 

 readied seventy million killogrammes of oil (1,377,482 cwt.) Barcelona, near which 

 as already mentioned, experiments in growing Arachis had commenced in 1787, 

 entered into competition with Marseilles. Spain proved not unsuited to the crop, 

 and thence comes the record that 700 pods have been obtained from a single root ; 

 but the putput of oil from Spain is not great. 



Another attempt at production in France took place in 1839 and 1810, when 

 a M. Chaise, who had been in Senegal, grew near Dax some five hectares (12J- acres) 

 with results beyond his expectation. Still, as Naudin reports (Naudin and Mueller, 

 Manuel de l'Acelimateur, 1887, p. 139), the cost of production was too great, and 

 despite M Chaise's big crop no further attempts to produce the plant in Prance 

 have occured. From Losconez in Hungary a more recent successful attempt is 

 reported (Just, Jahreshericht 1878, ii., p. 478) but it is not clear that profit can 

 be derived. 



The trade in ground-nuts thus remains one by which the tropics feed the 

 mills of Europe. Genoa, Bordeaux, Nantes, Dunkirk, London, Rotterdam, Hamburg, 

 and the Baltic ports have entered into competition with Marseilles, and the 

 Mozambique coast of Africa has commenced to export in large quantity. In this 

 process of decentralization, though France still remains facile princeps, Marseilles 

 no longer holds the share in the commerce which fell to that port thirty years ago. 

 Almost 100 million kilogrammes of Arachis were imported into France in 1898 

 chiefly in the pods, but partly decorticated, to a value of over £836,000, and repre- 

 senting 76,900,984 kilogrammes of kernels. In the same year Marseilles imported 

 Arachis bo the amount, represented as kernels, of 27,098,100 kilogrammes. The 

 proportion of the trade which fell to Marseilles was then a trifle more than one- 

 third of the total of France. 



The figures upon which the above statement is based were kindly supplied 

 to Kew by the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. From figures from 

 the same source the following table of recent imports to France has been 

 calculated : - 



Average. In the shell. Decorticated. Total as kernels. 



1892-4 ... 75,123,313 .. 105,816,151 ... 163,661,102 



1895-7 ... 57,516,807 ... 46,791,922 ... 88,513,197 



1898 ... 93,684,247 ... 4,764,114 ... 76,900,984 



The imports of Germany, which between 1880 and 1887 (Unlitzsch, 1. c, p. 

 397) averaged 8,395,000 kilogrammes have increased so that during the last three 

 years they have been :— 



Year. Kilogrammes. 



1896 ... ... ... ... 12,390,600 



1897 ... ... ... .. 15,187,800 



1898 ... ... ... ... 12,776,100 



Italy, too has increased her imports of oil. seeds, but no special statistics 

 for ground-nuts are available. 



Supply op Europe. 



Gambia, which sent 13,200 cwt. to Marseilles in 1837, was followed by Senegal 

 in 1810 with a small shipment. The increase in the exports then became rapid. In 

 1860 Gambia exported to the value of £79,612, and Sierra-Leone to £34,515 ; in 1870 



