The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom Part 79

The _Palma Christi_ grows continuously for about four years, and becomes a large tree in constant bearing, ripening its rich cl.u.s.ters of beans in such profusion, that 100 bushels may be obtained annually from an acre, and their product of oil two gallons per bushel.

There are several species, all of which yield oil of an equally good quality. A shrubby variety is common in South Australia, and other parts of New Holland. _Ricinus lividus_ is a native of the Cape of Good Hope. It is a hardy plant, of the easiest culture, and will thrive in almost any soil, whether in the burning plains or the coldest part of the mountains. The seed should be planted in the tropics in September, singly, and at the distance of 10 or twelve feet apart. They will bear the first season, and continue to yield for years. When the seed-pods become brown, they are in a fit state to pluck. It is often grown in the East intermixed with other crops. The primitive mode of obtaining the oil is to separate the seeds from the husks, and bruise them by tying them up in a gra.s.s mat. In this state they are put into a boiler amongst water, and boiled until all the oil is separated, which floats at the top, and the refuse sinks to the bottom; it is then skimmed off, and put away for use. The purest oil is obtained, as before-mentioned, by crushing the seeds (which are sewed up in horsehair bags), by the action of heavy iron beaters. The oil, as it oozes out, is caught in troughs, and conveyed to receivers, whence it is bottled for use.

Castor oil is used for lamps in the East Indies, and the Chinese have some mode of depriving it of its medicinal properties, so as to render it suitable for culinary purposes.

That which we import from the East Indies comes from Bombay and Calcutta, and is obtained at a very low price. It is exceedingly pure, both in color and taste.

In the West Indies the shrub grows about six feet high. The stalks are jointed, and the branches covered with leaves about eighteen inches in circ.u.mference, forming eight or ten sharp-pointed divisions, of a bluish green color, spreading out in different directions. The flowers contain yellow stamina; the seed is enclosed in a triangular husk, of a dark brown color, and covered with a light fur, of the same color as the husk. When the capsule is thoroughly ripened by the sun, it bursts, and expels the seeds, which are usually three in number.

In Jamaica this plant is of such speedy growth, that in one year it arrives at maturity, and I have known it to attain to the height of twenty feet. A gallon of the seed yields by expression about two pounds of oil.

The wholesale price in Liverpool, in October, 1853, was 3d. to 5d. per lb.

It is brought over from the East Indies in small tin cases, soldered together and packed in boxes, weighing about 2 cwt. each.

In Ceylon castor oil is obtained from two varieties of the plant, the white and the red.

The native mode of preparing the oil is by roasting the seed; this imparts an acridity to the oil, which is objectionable. By attending to the following directions, the oil may be prepared in the purest and best form. The modes of preparation are--1. By boiling in water. 2. By expression. 3. Extraction by alcohol. In the first the seeds are slightly roasted to coagulate the alb.u.men, cleaned of the integuments, bruised in a mortar, and the paste boiled in pure water. The oil which rises on the surface is removed, and treated with an additional quant.i.ty of fresh water; 10,000 parts of clean seed give by this process (in Jamaica) 3,250 of oil, of good quality, though amber-colored. 2. Expression is the simplest and most usually adopted process; the cleaned kernels are well bruised, placed in cloth bags, and compressed in a powerful lever and screw press. A thick oil is obtained, which must be filtered through cloth and paper to separate the mucilage. In Bengal the manufacturers boil the oil water, which coagulates some alb.u.men, and they subsequently filter through cloth, charcoal, and paper. 3. The extraction by alcohol is practised by some druggists. Each pound of paste is triturated with four pounds of alcohol, specific gravity 8.350, and the mixture subjected to pressure. The oil dissolved by the alcohol escapes very freely: one half is recovered by the distillation of the spirit, the residue of the distillation is boiled in a large quant.i.ty of water. The oil separates and is removed, and gently heated to expel any adherent moisture; then filtered at the temperature of 90 deg. Fahrenheit; 1,000 parts of the paste have by this process given 625 of colorless and exceedingly sweet oil.

The cultivation of the _Palma christi_, and the manufacture of castor oil, is extensively carried on in some parts of the United States, and continues on the increase. A single firm at St. Louis has worked up 18,500 bushels of beans in four months, producing 17,750 gallons of oil, and it is stated that 800 barrels have been sold, at 50 dollars per barrel. The oil may be prepared for burning, for machinery, soap, &c., and is also convertible into stearine. It is more soluble in alcohol than lard-oil.

American castor oil is imported for the most part from New York and New Orleans, but some comes from our own possessions in North America.

In the United States, according to the "American Dispensatory," the cleansed seeds are gently heated in a shallow iron reservoir, to render the oil liquid for easy expression, and then compressed in a powerful screw press, by which a whitish oily liquid is obtained, which is boiled with water in clean iron boilers, and the impurities skimmed off as they rise to the surface. The water dissolves the mucilage and starch, and the heat coagulates the alb.u.men, which forms a whitish layer between the oil and water. The clear oil is now removed, and boiled with a minute portion of water until aqueous vapors cease to arise: by this process an acrid volatile matter is got rid of. The oil is put into barrels, and in this way is sent into the market. American oil has the reputation of being adulterated with olive oil. Good seeds yield about 25 per cent. of oil. A large proportion of the drug consumed in the eastern section of the Union is derived by way of New Orleans from Illinois and the neighbouring States, where it is so abundant that it is sometimes used for burning in lamps.

In Jamaica the bruised seeds are boiled with water in an iron pot, and the liquid kept constantly stirred. The oil which separates swims on the top, mixed with a white froth, and is skimmed off. The skimmings are heated in a small iron pot, and strained through a cloth. When cold it is put in jars or bottles for use.

Castor oil imported. Retained.

lbs. lbs.

1826 263,382 453,072 1831 393,191 327,940 1836 981,585 809,559 1841 871,136 732,720 1846 1,477,168 -- 1849 1,084,272 -- 1850 3,495,632 --

The imports of castor oil come chiefly from the East India Company's possessions, and were as follows, nearly all being retained for home consumption:--

lbs.

1830 490,558 1831 343,373 1832 257,386 1833 316,779 1834 685,457 1835 1,107,115 1836 972,552 1837 957,164 1838 837,143 1839 916,370 1840 1,190,173 1841 869,947 1842 490,156 1843 717,696

In 1841, 12,406 Indian maunds of castor oil were shipped from Calcutta alone, and 7,906 ditto in 1842.

In 1842, 8 cases were shipped from Ceylon, 10 in 1843, 24 in 1844, and 14 in 1845.

1,439 barrels were shipped from New Orleans in 1847. The quant.i.ty brought down to that city from the interior was 1,394 barrels in 1848, and 1,337 barrels in 1849.

Within the last year or two, an attempt has been made to introduce the cake obtained in expressing the seeds of the castor oil plant as a manure, which is deserving attention, both because it is in itself likely to prove a serviceable addition to the list of fertilizers which may be advantageously employed, and because it may lead to the use of similar substances, which are at present neglected, or thrown aside as refuse.

The castor oil seed resembles in chemical composition the other oily seeds. It consists of a mixture of mucilaginous, alb.u.minous, and oily matters; and the former two of these are identical in const.i.tution and general properties with the substances found in linseed and rape cake, while the oil is princ.i.p.ally distinguished by its purgative properties. The cake obtained is in the form of ordinary oil-cake, but is at once distinguished from it by its color, and by the large fragments of the husk of the seeds which it contains. It is also much, softer, and may be easily broken down with the hand. I have a.n.a.lysed two samples of castor cake, stated to have been obtained by different processes; and though I have not been informed of the exact nature of these processes, I infer, from the large quant.i.ty of oil, that one must have been cold-drawn. The first of the following a.n.a.lyses is that of the sample which I believe the cold-drawn. It is the most complete of the two, and contains a determination of the amount of oil. In the other a.n.a.lysis this was not done, but there was no doubt on my mind that its quant.i.ty was much smaller.

No. 1. No. 2.

Water 8.32 16.31 Oil 24.32 -- Nitrogen 3.05 3.35 Ash 7.22 4.95

The ash contains-- Siliccous matters 1.96 -- Phosphates 3.36 2.27 Excess of phosphoric acid 0.64 --

In order to give a proper idea of the value of this substance as a manure, I shall quote here, for comparison sake, the average composition of rape cake, as deduced from the a.n.a.lyses contained in the Transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland:--

Water 10.68 Oil 11.10 Nitrogen 4.63 Ash 7.79 The ash contains-- Siliccous matters 1.18 Phosphates 3.87 Excess of phosphoric acid 0.39

It will be at once seen that there is a close general resemblance between these two substances, although there is no doubt that the castor cake is inferior to rape cake; still I believe that this inferiority is fully counterbalanced by the difference in price, which is such that, compared with rape cake, the castor cake is really a cheap manure. There is only one of its const.i.tuents which it contains in larger quant.i.ty, and that is the oil. No weight is, however, to be attached to the quant.i.ty of oil in a manure. In a substance to be used as food, it is of very high importance; but so far as we at present know, its value as manure is extremely problematical. Whale, seal, and other coa.r.s.e oils have been used as manures, and by some few observers benefits have been derived from their application, but the general experience has not been favorable to their use, nor should we chemically be induced to expect any beneficial effect from them. We have every reason to believe that the oils which are found in plants are produced there as the results of certain processes which are proceeding within the plant, and there is no evidence to show that any part of it is ever absorbed in the state of oil by the roots when they are presented to them. On the other hand, the oils are extremely inert substances, and undergo chemical changes very slowly; so that there is no likelihood of their being converted into carbonic acid, or any other substance which may be useful to the plant; and as they contain no nitrogen, and consist only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, they can yield only those elements of which the plant can easily obtain an unlimited supply. I can conceive cases in which the oil might possibly produce some mechanical effect on the soil, but none in which it could act as a manure, in the proper sense of the term.

KANARI on.--Mr. Crawfurd, in his "History of the Indian Archipelago,"

speaks most favorably of an oil obtained from the "Kanari," a tree which, he says, is a native of the same country as the sago palm, and is not found to the westward, though it has been introduced to Celebes and Java. I have not been able to distinguish its botanical name; but Mr. Crawfurd describes it as a large handsome tree, and one of the most useful productions of the Archipelago. It bears a nut of an oblong shape, nearly the size of a walnut, the kernel of which is as delicate as that of a filbert, and abounds with oil. The nuts are either smoked and dried for use, or the oil is expressed from them in their recent state. It is used for all culinary purposes, and is purer and more palatable than that of the coco-nut. The kernels, mixed up with a little sago meal, are made into cakes and eaten as bread.

THE COCO-NUT PALM.

This palm (_Cocos nucifera_) is one of the most useful of the extensive family to which it belongs, supplying food, clothing, materials for houses, utensils of various kinds, rope and oil; and some of its products, particularly the two last, form important articles of commerce. An old writer, in a curious discourse on palm trees, read before the Royal Society, in 1688, says, "The coco nut palm is alone sufficient to build, rig, and freight a ship with bread, wine, water, oil, vinegar, sugar, and other commodities. I have sailed (he adds) in vessels where the bottom and the whole cargo hath been from the munificence of this palm tree. I will take upon me to make good what I have a.s.serted." And then he proceeds to describe and enumerate each product. Another recent popular writer speaks in eloquent terms of the estimation in which it is held, and the various uses to which it is applied.

"Its very aspect is imposing. a.s.serting its supremacy by an erect and lofty bearing, it may be said to compare with other trees, as man with inferior creatures. The blessings it confers are incalculable. Year after year the islander reposes beneath its shade, both eating and drinking of its fruit; he thatches his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into baskets to carry his food; he cools himself with a fan plaited from the young leaflets, and shields his head from the sun by a bonnet of the leaves; sometimes he clothes himself with the cloth-like substance which wraps round the base of the stalks, whose elastic rods, strung with filberts, are used as a taper. The larger nuts, thinned and polished, furnish him with a beautiful goblet; the smaller ones with bowls for his pipes; the dry husks kindle his fires; their fibres are twisted into fishing-lines and cords for his canoes.

He heals his wounds with a balsam compounded from the juice of the nut; and with the oil extracted from its pulp embalms the bodies of the dead. The n.o.ble trunk itself is far from being valueless. Sawn into posts, it upholds the islander's dwelling; converted into charcoal, it cooks his food; and, supported on blocks of stones, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of the same hard material. In Pagan Tahiti, a coco-nut branch was the symbol of regal authority. Laid upon the sacrifice in the temple, it made the offering sacred; and with it the priests chastised and put to flight the evil spirits which a.s.sailed them. The supreme majesty of Oro, the great G.o.d of their mythology, was declared in the coco-nut log from which his image was rudely carved. Upon one of the Tonga Islands there stands a living tree, revered itself as a deity. Even upon the Sandwich Islands the coco palm retains all its ancient reputation; the people there having thought of adopting it as the national emblem."

Besides the foregoing and following uses, I am aware of several scents and spirituous liquors being procured from the flowers and pulp of the coco-nut.

This palm tree is one of the finest objects in nature. Its stem is tall and slender, without a branch; and at the top are seen from ten to two hundred coco-nuts, each as large as a man's head: over these are the graceful plumes, with their green gloss, and beautiful fronds of the nodding leaves. Nothing can exceed the graceful majesty of these intertropical fruit trees, except the various useful purposes to which the tree, the leaf, and the nut are applied by the natives.

1. The stem is used for--Bridges, posts, beams, rafters, paling, ramparts, loop-holes, walking sticks, water b.u.t.ts, bags (the upper cuticle), sieves in use for arrowroot.

2. The coco-nut is used for--milk, a delicious drink; meat from the sc.r.a.ped nut, for various kinds of food; jelly, _kora_, pulp, nut, oil, excellent and various food for man, beast, and fowl.

The sh.e.l.l for vessels to drink out of, water pitchers, lamps, funnels, fuel, _panga_ (for a game).

The fibre for sinnet, various cordage, bed stuffing, thread for tying combs, scrubbing-brushes, girdle (ornamental), whisk for flies, medicines, various and useful.

3. The leaf is used for--Thatch for houses, lining for houses, _takapau_ (mats), baskets (fancy and plain), fans, _palalafa_ (for sham fights), combs (very various), bedding (white fibre), _tafi_ (brooms), _Kubatse_ (used in printing), _mama_ (candles), screen for bedroom, waiter's tray.

Here are no less than forty-three uses of which we know something; and the natives know of others to which they can apply this single instance of the bounty of the G.o.d of nature. For house and clothes, for food and medicine, the coco-nut palm is their sheet anchor, as well as their ornament and amus.e.m.e.nt, who dwell in the torrid zone.

This fine palm, which always forms a prominent feature in tropical scenery, is a native of Southern Asia. It is spread by cultivation through almost all the intertropical regions of the Old and New Worlds; but it is cultivated nowhere so abundantly as in the Island of Ceylon, and those of Sumatra, Java, &c. On the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea it advances to Mokha, according to Niebuhr; but it does not succeed in Egypt. It is cultivated in the lower and southern portions of the Asiatic Continent, as on the coasts of Coromandel and Malabar, and around Calcutta. In the island of Ceylon, where the fruit of this tree forms one of the princ.i.p.al aliments of the natives, the nuts are produced in such quant.i.ties that in one year about three millions were exported, besides the manufactured produce in oil, &c. According to Marshall it requires a mean temperature of 72 deg. Its northern limit, therefore, is nearly the same as the southern limit of our cereals.

Rumphius enumerates thirteen varieties of this palm, but many of these have now been placed under other genera, and Lindley resolves them into three species--_C. nucifera_, the most generally diffused species, a native of the East Indies; and _C. flexuosa_ and _plumosa_, natives of Brazil. The trunk, which is supported by numerous, small fibrous roots, rises gracefully, with a slight inclination, from forty to sixty feet in height; it is cylindrical, of middling size, marked from the root upwards with unequal circles or rings, and is crowned by a graceful head of large leaves. The terminal bud of this palm, as well as that of the cabbage palm (_Euterpe montana_), is used as a culinary vegetable. The wood of the tree is known by the name of porcupine wood. It is light and spongy, and, therefore, cannot be advantageously employed in the construction of ships or solid edifices, though it is used in building huts; vessels made of it are fragile and of little duration. Its fruit, at different seasons, is in much request; when young, it is filled with a clear, somewhat sweet, and cooling fluid, which is equally refreshing to the native and the traveller. When the nut becomes old, or attains its full maturity, the fluid disappears, and the hollow is filled by a sort of almond, which is the germinating organ. This pulp or kernel, when cut in pieces and dried in the sun, is called copperah, and is eaten by the Malays, Coolies, and other natives, and from it a valuable species of oil is expressed, which is in great demand for a variety of purposes. The refuse oil cake is called Poonae, and forms an excellent manure.

A calcareous concretion is sometimes found in the centre of the nut, to which peculiar virtues have been attributed.

Along the Gulf of Cariaco there are many large coco walks. In moist and fertile ground it begins to bear abundantly the fourth year; but in dry soils it does not produce fruit until the tenth. Its duration does not generally exceed 80 or 100 years, at which period its mean height is about 80 feet. Throughout this coast a coco tree supplies annually about 100 nuts, which yield eight flascos of oil. The flasco is sold for about 1s. 4d. A great quant.i.ty is made at c.u.mana, and Humboldt frequently witnessed the arrival there of canoes containing 3,000 nuts.

Throughout the South Sea Islands, coco-nut palms abound, and oil may be obtained in various places. Some of the uninhabited islands are covered with dense groves, and the ungathered nuts, which have fallen year after year, lie upon the ground in incredible quant.i.ties. Two or three men, provided with the necessary apparatus for pressing out the oil, will, in the course of a week or two, obtain enough to load one of the large sea canoes. Coco nut oil is now manufactured in different parts of the South Seas, and forms no small part of the traffic carried on with trading vessels. A considerable quant.i.ty is annually exported from the Society Islands to Sydney. They bottle it up in large bamboos, six or eight feet long, and these form part of the circulating medium of Tahiti. The natives use the bruised fronds of _Polypodium cra.s.sifolium_ to perfume this oil. _Evodia triphylla_, a favorite evergreen plant with the natives of the Polynesian Islands, is also used for this purpose.

The most favorable situation for the growth of the coco palm is the ground near the sea-coast, and if the roots reach the mud or salt water, they thrive all the better for it. The coco-nut walks are the real estates of India, as the vineyards and olive groves are of Europe. I have seen these palms growing well in inland situations, remote from the sea, but always on plains, never upon hills or very exposed situations, where they do not arrive to maturity, wanting shelter, and being shaken too violently by the wind. The stems being tall and slight, and the whole weight of leaves and fruit at the head, they may not unaptly be compared to the mast of a ship with round top and topmast without shrouds to support it. Ashes and fish are good manures for it.

The coco-nut is essentially a maritime plant, and is always one of the first to make its appearance on coral and other new islands in tropical seas, the nut being floated to them, and rather benefiting than otherwise by its immersion in the salt water. Silex and soda are the two princ.i.p.al salts which the coco-nut abstracts from the soil, and hence, where these do not exist in great abundance, the tree does not thrive well. I do not know myself what is the practice in Ceylon, but in Brazil, Dr. Gardner tells me, salt is very generally applied to the coco-nut when planted. Far in the interior, he states, he has seen as much as half a bushel applied to a single tree, and that too when it cost about 2s. a pound, from the great distance it had to be brought. That the application, therefore, of salt, of seaweed, and saline mud, does more than supply soda, must be very evident, if we only recollect how difficult it is to dry any part of our dress that has been soaked in salt water, and what effect damp weather has on table salt, which, in a balance, has often been made use of as an hydrometer. Moisture is always attracted by salt, and the more sea mud and other such little matters that coco-nut planters can apply round the roots of their trees, there will most a.s.suredly be the less occasion for watering them in the dry season. Sea weed contains but very little fibrous matter, being chiefly composed of mucilage and water; and the experiments of Sir J. Pringle and Mr. C. W. Johnson, prove that salt in small quant.i.ties a.s.sists the decomposition of both animal and vegetable substances. Decomposed poonac, or oil-cake, is one of the best manures that can be applied, as it returns to the soil the component parts of which it has beau deprived to form the fruit.

The primary direction of the planter's industry will be to the establishment of a nursery of young plants. In Ceylon, for this purpose, the nuts are placed in squares of 400, covered with one inch of sand, or salt mud; are watered daily till the young shoots appear, and are planted out after the rains in September. Sand and salt mud are to be found on almost all the coasts where it would be desirable to plant nuts, and if they are put into the ground at the commencement of the rainy season, artificial watering will scarcely be necessary.