This nut, which grows on a vine instead of a tree,
and is dug from the ground like potatoes instead of being picked with a
pole, goes by various names according to locality, peanuts, ground-nuts,
monkey-nuts, arachides and goobers. As it takes the place of cotton oil
in some of its products so it takes its place in the fields and oilmills
of Texas left vacant by the bollweevil. The once despised peanut added
some $56,000,000 to the wealth of the South in 1916. The peanut is rich
in the richest of foods, some 50 per cent. of oil and 30 per cent. of
protein. The latter can be worked up into meat substitutes that will
make the vegetarian cease to envy his omnivorous neighbor. Thanks
largely to the chemist who has opened these new fields of usefulness,
the peanut-raiser got $1.25 a bushel in 1917 instead of the 30 cents
that he got four years before.
It would be impossible to enumerate all the available sources of
vegetable oils, for all seeds and nuts contain more or less fatty matter
and as we become more economical we shall utilize of what we now throw
away.
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