ather than
beneficial, to stock, often causing colics, and endangering the life of
a valuable horse or mule. Peanut vines, even the best of them, unharmed
by frost, should not be fed very largely to horses. There is always a
good deal of grit and dust upon them, and much of this taken into the
stomach, cannot but be more or less harmful to the animals.

And yet, despite these few drawbacks, peanut hay has proved to be a
valuable forage, and one that the peanut-planter could not well dispense
with, inasmuch as so many do not make enough of other forage to serve
them, and must, therefore, depend on the peanut crop to help them out.
Thus the planter is benefited in several ways through this crop. He gets
a valuable staple to sell, and one that always commands the ready cash,
he fattens his hogs on the pods left in the ground, and he secures a
large amount of very good hay in the vines. Thus he is doubly benefited,
and no matter how low the price of peanuts may be, the farmer does not,
and cannot, ordinarily, lose much on the cultivation of this great crop.
If he does not risk too much on commercial fertilizers, which no planter
of this crop ever should do, he runs little risk of suffering any
crushing loss thereon.

Such is a brief but connected view of the Peanut crop from the time of
planting the seed, to its sale and manufacture. The views and practice
here advanced are all from original sources. We have not drawn upon any
other writer for any part of this treatise. Indeed, save a few short
articles scattered through the agricultural press of the past ten or
fifteen years, we know of no source from whence material could be
derived. So far as we are aware, this is the pioneer work in America on
the Peanut plant. This being the case, it must, of course, be quite
defective. We might easily have made it a larger book, and perhaps some
few years hence, when the field and subject shall have enlarged, it will
be found desirable to revise and enlarge this treatise. For the present,
we must be satisfied with smaller things, and remain content with a few
practical directions rather than an elaborate work. Until that time, if
it comes at all, we lay aside the pen, and turn our hands (as it has
been our wont to do during the past few weeks) to actual labors in
connection with the Peanut plant.

APPENDIX A.

STATISTICS.

It was our design, at first, to present a somewhat full array of
statistics in relation to the Pean