phthisis. Its medicinal virtues are now generally discredited, except as a restorative agent in the loss of hair resulting from debilitating fevers. Its value in this direction may be surmised from the splendid heads of hair possessed by the Filipino women, who generally use the oil as a hair dressing.

Cocoanut oil is derived from the fleshy albumen or meat of the ripe fruit, either fresh or dried. The thoroughly dried meat is variously known as copra, coprax, and copraz. The exportation of copra is detrimental to the best interests of the planter, tending to enrich the manufacturer and impoverish the grower. The practice, however, is so firmly established that the writer can only record a probably futile protest against its continuance.

The causes which for a long time will favor the exportation of copra instead of oil in this Archipelago may be briefly stated as follows:

(1) An oil-milling plant, constructed with due regard to economy of labor and the production of the best quality of oil, would involve an outlay of capital of $2,500, gold, and upward, according to capacity. The production of copra requires the labor of the planter’s hands only.

(2) The oil packages must be well-made barrels, casks, or metallic receptacles. The initial cost of the packages is consequently great, their return from distant ports impracticable, and their sale value in the market of delivery is not sufficient to offset the capital locked up in an unproductive form. On the other hand, copra may be sold or shipped in boxes, bags, sacks, and bales, or it may even be stored in bulk in the ship’s hold.

(3) When land transportation has to be considered, the lack of good roads still further impedes the oil maker. He can not change the size and weight of his packages from day to day to meet the varying passability of the trail. On the other hand, packages of copra may be adjusted to meet all emergencies, and the planter can thus take advantage of the market conditions which may be denied to the oil maker.

(4) Perhaps the most serious difficulty the oil maker has to contend with is the continuous discouragement he encounters from the agent of foreign factories, who buys in the open market and, bidding up to nearly the full oil value of the copra, finds an ample manufacturer’s profit paid by the press cake, so valuable abroad, but, unfortunately, practically without sale or value here. The residue from the mill may be utilized both for food and for manure by the oil maker who is a tree owner and who maintains cattle. For either of these purposes its value rates closely up to cotton-seed cake, and the time is not remote when it will be recognized in the Philippines as far too valuable a product to be permitted to be removed from the farm excepting at a price which will permit of the purchase at a less figure of an equivalent in manure. So active are the copra-buying agents in controlling this important branch of the industry, that they refuse to buy the press cake at any price, with the result that, in two instances known to the writer, they have forced the closure of oil-milling plants and driven the oil maker back to his copra.

A young cocoanut tree.

Many copra-making plants in India and Ceylon are now supplied with decorticating, breaking, and evaporating machinery. The process employed in this Archipelago consists in first stripping the ripe fruit of the outer fibrous husk. This is effected by means of a stout, steel spearhead, whose shaft or shank is embedded firmly in the soil to such a depth that the spear point projects above the ground rather less than waist high. The operator then holds the nut in his hands and strikes it upon the spear point, gives it a downward, rotary twist, and thus, with apparent ease, quickly removes the husk. An average operator will husk 1,000 nuts per day, and records have been made of a clean up of as many as 3,000 per day. The work, however, is exceedingly hard, and involves great dexterity and wrist strength.

Another man now takes up the nut and with a bolo strikes it a smart blow in the middle, dividing it into two almost equal parts. These parts are spread out and exposed to the sun for a few hours, or such time as may be necessary to cause the fleshy albumen to contract and shrink away from the hard outer shell, so that the meat may be easily detached with the fingers.

Weather permitting, the meat thus secured is sun dried for a day and then subjected to the heat of a slow fire for several hours. In some countries this drying is now effected by hot-air driers, and a very white and valuable product secured; but in the Philippines the universal practice is to spread out the copra upon what may be called a bamboo grill, over a smoky fire made of the shells and husks, just sufficient heat being maintained not to set fire to the bamboo. The halves, when dried, are broken by hand into still smaller irregular fragments, and subjected to one or two days of sun bath. By this time the moisture has been so thoroughly expelled that the copra is now ready to be sacked or baled and stored away for shipment or use.

All modern cocoanut-oil mills are supplied with a decorticator armed with revolving discs that tear or cut through the husk longitudinally, freeing the nut from its outer covering and leaving the latter in the best possible condition for the subsequent extraction of its fiber. This decorticator is fed from a hopper and is made of a size and capacity to husk from 500 to 1,000 nuts per hour.

Rasping and grinding machinery of many patterns and makes, for reducing the meat to a pulp, is used in India, Ceylon, and China; and, although far more expeditious, offers no improvements, so far as concerns the condition to which the meats are reduced, over the methods followed in the Philippines. Here the fleshy halves of the meat are held by hand against a rapidly revolving, half-spherical knife blade which scrapes and shaves the flesh down to a fine degree of comminution. The resulting mass is then macerated in a little water and placed in bags and subjected to pressure, and the milky juice which flows therefrom is collected in receivers placed below. This is now drawn off into boilers and cooked until the clear oil is concentrated upon the surface. The oil is then skimmed off and is ready for market.

The process outlined above is very wasteful. The processes I have seen in operation are very inadequate, and I estimate that, not less than 10 per cent of the oil goes to loss in the press cake. This is a loss that does not occur in establishments equipped with the best hydraulic presses. It is true that very heavy pressure carries through much coloring matter not withdrawn by the primitive native mill, and that the oil is consequently darker, and sooner undergoes decomposition; but modern mills are now supplied with filtration plants through which this objection is practically overcome.

The principles of the above process are daily reproduced in thousands of Filipino homes, where the hand rasping of the nut, the expression of the milky juice through coarse cloth, its subsequent boiling down in an open pan, and the final skimming off of the oil are in common practice. Notwithstanding the cheapness of labor, it is only by employing a mill well equipped with decorticating, rasping, hydraulic crushing, and steam-boiling machinery, and with facilities to convert the residue to feeding or other uses, that one may hopefully enter the field of oil manufacture in these Islands in competition with copra buyers.

Coir.

The fiber of the cocoanut husk, or coir, as it is commercially known, has never yet been utilized in this Archipelago, excepting occasionally for local consumption.

Fig. 1.—Cocoanut husk-crushing mill.

Second in value only to the copra, this product has been allowed to go to waste. The rejected husks are thrown together in immense heaps, which are finally burned and the ashes, exceedingly rich in potash and phosphoric acid, are left to blow away.

As the commercial value of the fiber is greater than the manurial value of the salts therein, it is economy to utilize the fiber and purchase potash and phosphoric acid when needed to enrich the soil.

Highly improved and inexpensive power machinery for the complete and easy extraction of the fibers of the husk, either wet or dry, is now rapidly superseding the tedious hand process once in such general use. Good patterns of machinery are shown in the “husk-crushing mill” (fig. 1) and in the “fiber extractor” (fig. 2). The first breaks, crushes, and flattens out the husks by means of powerful, fluted metal rollers and, in the second the broken husks are fed over a revolving drum set with teeth especially devised for tearing out the fiber from the entire mass. Finally, it is fed into one of the many forms of “willowing” machines, which reduces the mass to clean fiber, which is now ready for grading, baling, and shipment. The residual dust and waste from this operation may be used as an absorbent for liquid manures, and ultimately returned to the plantation. The yield of fiber varies from 12 to 25 quintals of coir and 4 to 7 quintals of brush fiber per 10,000 average husks. In the Philippines the nuts yield a large amount of fiber and a relatively small percentage of chaff and dust. With improved machinery and careful handling, 18 quintals of spinning coir and 5 quintals of bristle fiber from every 10,000 husks is a fair estimate of the product.

Fig. 2.—Cocoanut fiber-extracting machine.

As the cost of manufacture is generally rated at one-half the selling price, and as we must add a further charge of 20 per cent to cover freight and commission, we have resulting from the sale of the 23 quintals, or 2,300 kilos, at £16 per English ton, a balance of £11 11s. per hectare.

But there are other considerations which should not be overlooked. The husks of 10,000 cocoanuts will withdraw from the land 61.5 kilos of potash and 3 kilos of phosphoric acid, and the restoration of the full amount is called for to compensate for the growing wants of the tree, in addition to that withdrawn by the crop. The necessary fertilizers are worth, approximately, 5½d. per kilo, making a further reduction of £1 8s. and leaving as a net profit £10 3s., or, reduced to American money, nearly $50, gold, per hectare.

The machines above referred to will cost $800, gold, and $1,200 additional will purchase and house the power necessary to operate them. Such a plant will work up 1,000 nuts a day, and handle in a year the output of a grove of 30 hectares. With the addition of two or more fiber extractors the capacity of the plant may be doubled without material expense, and it should rather more than pay its entire cost in one year.