THE VALUE OF A WASTE PRODUCT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2572, 5 January 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE VALUE OF A WASTE PRODUCT.

The Atlanta Constitution asks—Was there, ever such a history as that of the cotton seed ? For 70 years despised as a nuisance, and burned or dumped as garbage. Then discovered to 62 the very food for which the soil was hungering, and reluctantly admitted to the of utilities. Shortly afterward found to be nutritious food for beast as well as soil, and thereupon treated with something like respect. Once admitted to the circle of farm husbandries, found to hold 35 gallons of pure oil to the ton, worth in the crude state £14 to the ton, or £40,000,000 for the whole crop of seed. But then the system was devised for refining this oil up to a value of 1 dol. a

gallon, and the frugal Italian placed a cask of it at the root of every olive tree, and then dch'od the Borean breath of the Alps. And then experience showed that the ton of cotton seed was a better fertiliserand betterstock producer when robbed ofits 35 gallons of of oil than before. And that the hulls of the seed made the best of fuel for feeding the oil mill engine. And that the ashes of the hulls scooped from the engine's draft had the highest commercial value as potash. And that the "refuse" of the whole made the best and purest soap stock, to carry to the toilet the perfumes of Lubin or C dgate. About this time we began to spell cotton seed with capital letters And how it travelled abroad in various d-ossr-s ? As meal cakes it whitened the Meadows of England with woolly fleeces aurl fattened the British cattle under the oaks ; it sputtered ou the stoves of the Dutch in liuu in lard : it glistened in the cafes of Paris as olive oils, and from under the dykes in Holland it went forth to parade in ail the bravery of butter and butturiue. In our own country it renewed the wasted strength of Southern fields and clad them with whiteness that would shame the fleeces of England, or jellow that would pale the ileeces of Argonauts. It knocked the Western lard out of the frying pan into the fire. It furnished the Armours and Fairbanks with a pure substance for the rancid fat they had been shipping us, and suggested the possibility of a clean and cheap lard. And about this time Congress jumped on to cotton seed with bolli feet and proposed to check its further career by a prohibitory tax, And nowcomesagentleman from Atlanta with a process by which he extracts 30 gallons of fine oil from every ton of cotton seed meal after the oil mills have done with it. In the tailings of the the oil mils he finds this impeded and ample store, which he; defectly extracts with naphtha, leaving the meal more nutritious as food for beast or Held than before In- took £10 per ton from it. This process 11. , - has tried repeatedly in his laboratory. This invention will add 40 per cent to the quantity ofjoil taken by the old process from a given quantity of seed.