Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1885 — The Peanut. [ARTICLE]

The Peanut.

A scientific journal having recently said that the manufacture of oil from peanuts was destined to draw on the crop to such an extent that the nuts would beoome a scarce article of trade as a food nut in the near future, a reporter asked a wholesale dealer in pea - nuts for further information on the subject. “There isn’t a pint of peanuts made into oil in this country that 1 know of,' and never will be as long as the greasy cotton-seed holds out,” he said. “Before they began to make cotton-seed oil peanuts were used largely ip manufacturing an oil that was used in place of olive oil, and during the war a great deal of the illuminating and lubricating oil used in the South was made from peanuts, and the entire crop was used for that purpose. The making of peanut oil was a very extensive industry in France for many years before the introduction of cotton-seed oil, and in those days at least fiO per cent, of the oil imported by us as olive oil was either pure oil of peanut or olive oil adulterated with peanut oil. France makes considerable peanut oil yet. and America is the chief buyer of this product, and wa eat it as well as our cotton-seed oil, when we eat oil at all, in nine-tenths of the restaurants and hotels, and imagine it is the genuine olive grease. The nut now chiefly used in France for oilmaking is the African gropnd-uut, which all through tropical Africa is largely, raised and used, cooked or raw, as food. It is exported in large quantities to France from Guinea and Angola. It is richer in'oil by one-third than the peanut, and is put on the Marseilles market cheaper by half than the American nut can be sold there. The peanut-lover need have no fear for the future of the popular shell fruit.”— New York Sun.