Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1899-06-15
ALL ABOUT PEANUTS.
THE GooBER BECAME POPULAR JUST
 AFTER THE CIVIL WAR.

Consumed in the United states 11c"
 Year-Camc ts This Country With ths
 First Slaves From Africa.
 "The American people are evidently very partial to peanuts" remarked large peanut planter in Virginia to the writer recently, flor there are nearly 4,OO0,OO bushels of them consumed in the United States annually. Before the civil war the peanut was only holiday luxury to the majority Of the people living in the north, the day when the circus was in town, during the country fair and the great ana glorious Fourth of July being the prln- cipal occasions that the popular yearn- ing for the nut was in any measure sat- isfied. The product then amounted 10 barely 500,000 bushels year.
 .'At the close of the war when the soldiers returned north thousands oi them had cultivated such liking for the nut, which they had often pulled from the ground and roasted at then campfires while in Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina, that the crop then raised in these states didn't begin to supply the demand. WideaWake farm- CTS saw the point, and small garden patches where peanuts had been grown for generations were soon abandoned for broad fields, and to-day Virginia and North Carolina are growing A. 000.000 bushels of peanuts a year-a result due almost entirely to the civil war and the habit the federal troops contracted of eating large quantities of the nuts. Naturally. the returned soldiers demand for peanuts placed them within reach of the rural popu- lation in the north, and the nut soon ceased to be a holiday luxury.
 "When the war broke out most of the peanuts consumed in this country were raised in North Carolina. A great many were also imported from Africa. They were of inferior quail 1ty. In fact, the best antebellum peanuts were poor compared with the nuts grown to-day. But the demand for tue nuts in recent years has not had the effect of Improving the North Carolina product or increasing its yield to any great extent. Virginia and Tennessee, however, woke right up under the increased demand, and im- proved cultivation has produced nut especially in Virginia, that is as near perfect as it can be.
 T don't suppose there are many peo- pie who know that the peanut came to this country with the first cargo ot slaves that were landed on our shores. It is native of Africa, and in it's orig inal state as full of grease almost as 8 bit of pork. Cultivation and change of soil have greatly reduced the oleag, inous quality of the nut, although the North Carolina variety has enough grease yet to find a ready sale in France, where it joins it's African an- cestor and cottonseed in supplying not a little of the olive oil we find in the restaurants and family groceries. Nor folk, Va, is the greatest peanut cen. ter in the world, and handles annually 100000 bags, or 8,000,000 bushels.
 ''It is a pretty sight to see a peanut plantation when the vines are in blos- som. The blossoms are a bright yell low and the vines are a vivid green. As soon as the blossom appears a fine branch forms on the vine and shoots down into the ground. The peas, as the nuts are called on the plantation. form on the shoot beneath the ground. like potatoes. When the crop is gath cred in October the vine is plougbed up, and the nuts hang to the roots. Vines and all are piled in cocks in the field, and in twenty days the nuts are ready to be pulled off, placed in bags and taken to the factories. There they are cleansed of dirt, assorted, pol ished in revolving cylinders and put in. to bags ready for the market"
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