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Show GREAT AMERICAN PIE PUMPKIN IS ONCE MORE THE MONARCH OF ALL. Immense Consumption of the Luscious Dainty Throughout the Land Figures Fig-ures Show th Extent of Its Wondrous Won-drous Popularity. The pumpkin pie is once mora abroad in the land. On the counter of the confectioners, in the window ' of the dairy lunches and on the em bossed menus of the hotels wher wealth and fashion flock, it again takes its honored place, to gladden "with its presence the heart of old and young. New York pre-eminent in most things is the greatest pumpkin pie-. pie-. -eating city in the world. During the season, from September to February, there are, on an average, more than 15,000 pumpkin pies a day eaten in that city. Estimating each pie to contain con-tain five pieces, an army of something like 75,000 pumpkin aters muster daily. To make 15,000 pies a day requires 25,000' pounds of pumpkin and 10,000 quarts of milk. Such dry, prosaic and -exact things as figures are hardly in keeping with the poetic pumpkin; but it is interesting to figure out the fact that in the four months or so during -which the pumpkin pie flourishes there are about 3,000,000 pounds of the fruit used to make the pies which are eaten eat-en In that city, and a million and a quarter quarts of milk. With a pencil nd an imagination interesting figures of the consumption of the United States at large might be worked out. In the days when people who are now middle-aged were boys for it is to the male sex primarily that the pumpkin pie has always appealed pumpkins were raised as a "stolen crop," a few seeds placed at intervals in a field of Indian corn or potatoes often giving, besides the regular crop, a. ton of pumpkins. But now the pumpkin, though still to some extent raised in the old way, has attained the dignity of being considered con-sidered worthy to be raised for itself alone. Pumpkin farms are numerous all through the central, and New England Eng-land states, and yield good returns to their proprietors. The largest pumpkin farm near New "York is in Monmouth county, N. J., where a tract of 300 acres is given over principally to the raising of pumpkins. pump-kins. The cultivation of the fruit, too, is no longer a haphazard affair, butyls conducted on scientific principles, the soil being thoroughly fertilized with the special view of providing the kind of richness needed in the pumpkin. |