The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom Part 50

In the Bermudas, a deep rich soil, or one in which marsh or peat prevail, is alone adapted for growing arrowroot in perfection.

A correspondent from the Bermudas, (where arrowroot forms the great staple crop of the islands), informs me that he ploughed up a small piece of land, twenty rods (or the eighth part of an acre), with a small plough and one horse. He ploughed it over three times, and the third time planted the arrowroot as he ploughed it. The land had not been turned up before for twenty years.

The expenses and profits stand thus:--

EXPENSE.

. s. d.

To the ploughman, harrowing and planting the arrowroot 1 0 0 Arrowroot plants 16 0 Digging it up 1 0 0 Deduct half, as the land was planted for the next year 0 10 0 0 10 0 Balance carried down, being net profit 5 14 0 -------- 8 0 0 PRODUCE.

By 2,000 lbs. of root at 8s. per 100 lbs. 8 0 0 By balance brought down as net profit 5 14 0

The above 5 14s. clear profit on the 20 rods, is at the rate of 45 12s. profit for one acre. Now, if a small cultivator were to plant three or four acres, and get only one-half of the above profit, it would give a good return, and would be well worth the trial.

Arrowroot requires a good rich red soil, of which there is still much lying waste. The best time for planting it is in April, but it can be planted in March, or indeed at any time after the first of the year, till May: though if taken up and planted before Christmas, you may depend it will not come to any perfection. Arrowroot can be planted in many ways; either in holes made with a hoe, ploughed under, or in drills like Irish potatoes. Now the way I prefer is to prepare the land, then strike the line at two feet apart, and make holes with a pointed stick or dibble six inches apart, putting in each hole one strong plant or two small ones, then cover them up. This is more trouble than the old way, but it gives an excellent crop. It can also be planted like Irish potatoes in drills, two feet apart in the rows, and six inches between the plants. It should be hand-weeded in the spring, because if it is hoed, most likely you will cut some of it off which may be springing under ground, and it will never come up so strong again. Arrowroot requires very strong ground and plenty of manure. Farm yard manure is the best; next to that green seaweed dripping with salt water--this is an excellent manure, and should be dug in the ground as the arrowroot is taken up. I have no doubt that it would be of great advantage to the planter, if he were to put a cask in a cart, fill it with salt water, and put it on the land a few weeks before it is planted. Some people say that arrowroot does not pay so well, because it has to stay in the ground a whole year; but then if you have onions you can plant them over it, and so obtain a crop which will pay much better than the arrowroot itself. If you have a large piece of arrowroot ground, take up one half early, and plant it out with Irish potatoes; then take up the other half later, and with the plants set out your potato ground, that is if you have taken up your potatoes; if not, plant the arrowroot between the rows, in holes; so that when you take up the potatoes, you clean the arrowroot and loosen the ground, which will give a good crop; or you can plant Indian corn very thin over the arrowroot ground (if you have nothing else), but be sure to cut it up before it ripens corn, or it will injure your arrowroot crop; or you may plant a few melon seeds over it, and you will have a fine crop of fruit.

In 1845 I planted, in the months of January and February, a quarter of an acre of good land, in arrowroot and onions.

The expense and profit stand as follow.--

EXPENSE . s. d.

To digging the ground 1 0 0 Planting arrowroot 0 6 0 Twelve load of seaweed, at 1s. 0 12 0 Rotten manure for onions, 10 loads, at 2s. 1 0 0 One bottle onion seed 0 16 0 Sowing onion seed and keeping the plants clean 0 10 0 Planting out onions 1 0 0 Cleaning onions after set out 0 15 0 Tops and making basket 1 8 0 Pulling, cutting, and basketing 0 18 0 Carting and s.h.i.+pping 0 8 0 Digging arrowroot 2 0 0 -------- 10 13 0 Clear profit on quarter acre 22 13 9 -------- 33 6 9 PRODUCE By onions sold 20 16 0 By arrowroot 12 10 9 -------- 33 6 9

This is at the rate of 90 15s. clear profit per acre, which is more than double the worth of the land. I have not named the arrowroot plants, because I have planted my land with them again, but they might be fairly put to the credit of the account. The above statement shows what may be done with good land and good management; but even if a man can only clear 10 on an acre of land, he ought not to grumble.

Dr. Ure gives a most interesting and lucid account of the mode of manufacture in the island of St. Vincent, where the plant is now cultivated with great success, and the root manufactured in a superior manner.

It grows there to the height of about three feet, and it sends down its tap root from twelve to eighteen inches into the ground. Its maturity is known by the flagging and falling down of the leaves, an event which takes place when the plant is from ten to twelve months'

old. The roots being dug up with the hoe, are transported to the was.h.i.+ng-house, where they are thoroughly freed from all adhering earth, and next taken individually into the hand and deprived, by a knife, of every portion of their skins, while every unsound part is cut away. This process must be performed with great nicety, for the cuticle contains a resinous matter, which imparts color and a disagreeable flavor to the fecula, which no subsequent treatment can remove. The skinned roots are thrown into a large cistern, with a perforated bottom, and there exposed to the action of a copious cascade of pure water, till this runs off quite unaltered. The cleansed roots are next put into the hopper of a mill, and are subjected to the powerful pressure of two pairs of polished rollers of hard bra.s.s; the lower pair of rollers being set much closer together than the upper. The starchy matter is thus ground into a pulp, which falls into the receiver placed beneath, and is thence transferred to large fixed copper cylinders, tinned inside, and perforated at the bottom with numerous minute orifices, like a kitchen drainer. Within these cylinders, wooden paddles are made to revolve with great velocity, by the power of a water-wheel, at the same time that a stream of pure water is admitted from above. The paddle-arms beat out the fecula from the fibres and parenchyma of the pulp, and discharge it in the form of a milk through the perforated bottom of the cylinder. This starchy water runs along pipes, and then through strainers of fine muslin into large reservoirs, where, after the fecula has subsided, the supernatant water is drawn off, and fresh water being let on, the whole is agitated and left again to repose.

This process of ablution is repeated till the water no longer acquires anything from the fecula. Finally, all the deposits of fecula of the day's work are collected into one cistern, and being covered and agitated with a fresh change of water, are allowed to settle till next morning. The water being now let off, the deposit is skimmed with palette knives of German silver, to remove any of the superficial parts, in the slightest degree colored; and only the lower, purer, and denser portion is prepared by drying for the market.

On the Hopewell estate, in St. Vincent, where the chief improvements have been carried out, the drying-house is constructed like the hot-house of an English garden. But instead of plants it contains about four dozen of drying pans, made of copper, 7 feet by 4 feet, and tinned inside. Each pan is supported on a carriage having iron axles, with _lignum vitae_ wheels, like those of a railway carriage, and they run on rails. Immediately after sunrise, these carriages, with their pans, covered with white gauze to exclude dust and insects, are run out into the open air, but if rain be apprehended they are run back under the glazed roof. In about four days the fecula is thoroughly dry and ready to be packed, with German silver shovels, into tins or American flour barrels, lined with paper, attached with arrowroot paste. The packages are never sent to this country in the hold of the s.h.i.+p, as their contents are easily tainted by noisome effluvia, of sugar, &c.

Arrowroot is much more nouris.h.i.+ng than the starch of wheat or potatoes, and the flavor is purer. The fresh, root consists, according to Benzon, of 0.07 of volatile oil; 26 of starch (23 of which are obtained in the form of powder, while the other 3 must be extracted from the parenchyma in a paste, by boiling water); 1.48 of vegetable alb.u.men; 0.6 of a gummy extract; 0.25 of chloride of calcium; 6 of insoluble fibrine; and 65.6 of water.

Arrowroot is often adulterated in this country with potato flour and other ingredients.

Dr. Lankester a.s.serts that the value of arrowroot starch, as an article of diet, is not greater than that of potato starch, and that the yield of starch is not greater from the arrowroot than from potatoes; but this I must decidedly deny. Chemical a.n.a.lysis and experience are proofs to the contrary.

The a.n.a.logy arrowroot has to potato starch, has induced many persons to adulterate the former substance with it; and not only has this been done, but I have known instances in which potato starch alone has been sold for the genuine foreign article. There is no harm in this, to a certain extent; but it certainly is a very great fraud upon the public (and one for which the perpetrators ought to be most severely punished), to sell so cheap an article at the same price as one which is comparatively costly. There is, moreover, in potato starch, a peculiar taste, bringing to mind that of raw potatoes, from which the genuine arrowroot is entirely free. This fraud, however, can be readily detected; arrowroot is not quite so white as potato starch, and its grains are smaller, and have a pearly and very brilliant l.u.s.tre; and further, it always contains peculiar clotted ma.s.ses, more or less large, which have been formed by the adhesion of a mult.i.tude of grains during the drying. These ma.s.ses crush very readily when pressed between the fingers, and as before stated, arrowroot is free from that peculiar odor due to potato starch. This may be most readily developed by mixing the suspected sample with hot water; if it be genuine arrowroot, the mixture is inodorous, if potato starch, the smell of raw potatoes is immediately developed. If a mixture of arrowroot and potato starch be minutely observed by means of a good microscope, the grains of arrowroot may be readily detected; they are very small and exceedingly regular in shape, whilst those of potato starch are much larger, and very irregular in shape. But the most convenient and delicate test of all, is that proposed by Dr.

Scharling, of Copenhagen. After mentioning the test by the microscope, he goes on to state that he has obtained more favorable results by employing diluted nitric acid; and that, if arrowroot or potato starch be mixed with about two parts of concentrated nitric acid, both will immediately a.s.sume a tough gelatinous state. This ma.s.s, when potato starch is employed, is almost transparent, and when arrowroot is used, is nearly opaque, as in the case above mentioned, in which hydrochloric acid is subst.i.tuted. A mixture of nitric acid and water, however, operates very differently on these two kinds of starch. The glutinous ma.s.s yielded by the potato starch, becomes in a very brief period so tough that the pestle employed for stirring the mixture is sufficiently agglutinated to the mortar, that the latter may be lifted from the table by its means. Arrowroot, on the other hand, requires from twenty-five to thirty minutes to acquire a like tenacity.

The _Lancet_ recently stated that, on a microscopical a.n.a.lysis of 50 samples of arrowroot, purchased indiscriminately of various London tradesmen, 22 were found to be adulterated. In 16 cases this adulteration consisted in the addition of a single inferior product much cheaper in price, such as potato flour, sago meal, or tapioca starch, while in other instances there was a combination of these articles, potato flour being usually preponderant. Ten of the mixtures contained scarcely a particle of the genuine Maranta or West India arrowroot, for which they were sold. One consisted almost wholly of sago meal; two of potato flour and sago meal; two of potato flour, sago meal, and tapioca starch; one of tapioca starch; and four of potato arrowroot, or starch entirely. The worst specimens were those which were done up in canisters especially marked as "Genuine West India arrowroot," or as being "warranted free from adulteration;" and one, which contained a considerable quant.i.ty of potato flour, was particularly recommended to invalids, and certified as the finest quality ever imported into this country. The profits to the vendors of the inferior compounds are to be estimated from the fact that the price of sago meal and potato starch is about 4d. per lb., while the genuine Maranta arrowroot is from 1s. to 3s. 6d. per lb.

The arrowroot of Bermuda has long borne a high reputation, being manufactured on a better principle and being therefore of superior quality to that produced in Antigua, St. Vincent, and other West Indian islands. The process is tedious and requires a good deal of labor. There is no doubt, however, that the quality of the water has a great deal of influence on the fecula. Bermuda arrowroot is necessarily made from rain water collected in tanks or reservoirs, and the lime and the deposit from houses, &c., may alter its properties.

After the root is taken from the ground it is placed in a mill, and is thereby cleansed of its exterior excrescences; it is then thoroughly washed, when it is ready for the large machine, the principle of which is similar to the "treadmill." A horse is placed on something like a platform, and as he prances up and down, the machinery is set in play.

A person stands at the end, and places the root in the wheel of the machine, which, after being ground, falls into a trough of water.

After going through this process, it is rewashed and then placed in vessels to dry in the sun. It is packed in boxes lined with blue paper or tin, and sent to the markets in England and America, where it generally meets with ready sale.

At a meeting of the Agricultural Society of Bermuda, held in May, 1840, Mr. W.M. c.o.x submitted a new arrowroot strainer which he had invented. It consists of two cloth strainers fixed to hoops from 15 to 20 inches in diameter. The strainers working one within the other, are kept in motion by a lever, moved by hand. The whole apparatus is not an expensive one, and is well adapted for aiding the manufacture of arrowroot upon an expeditious and economical plan.

A simple method by which starch may be extracted from the fecula with much purity consists in enclosing the flour in a muslin bag and squeezing it with the fingers while submerged in clean water, by which process the starch pa.s.ses out in a state of white powder and subsides.

Two essential const.i.tuents of flour are thus separated from each other; a viscid substance remains in the bag, which is called gluten, and the white powder deposited is starch.

The princ.i.p.al quarters from whence the supply is derived, are the Bermudas, St. Vincent, Barbados and Grenada, in the West Indies; Ceylon, and some other parts of the East--and a few of our settlements on the West coast of Africa. The annual imports for home consumption average 500 tons.

The cultivation of arrowroot for the production of starch in St.

Vincent has increased enormously of late years. In 1835, the island produced 41,397 lbs.; in 1845 it exported 828,842 lbs. The exports to 15th June, 1851, were, 2,934 barrels, 2,083 half barrels, 5,610 tins.

The culture is year by year extending, and as, unlike that of the sugar cane, it may be carried on on a small scale with very little outlay of capital, we may reasonably antic.i.p.ate a still further progressive extension for some years to come. Arrowroot, when once established in virgin soil, produces several crops with very little culture. In the first half of 1851, 25,027 lbs. were s.h.i.+pped from Montego Bay, Jamaica. The quant.i.ty of arrowroot on which duty of 1s.

per cwt. was paid in the six years ending 1840, was as follows:--

Cwts.

1835 3,581 1836 3,280 1837 2,858 1838 2,538 1839 2,264 1840 2,124

The imports in the last few years have been in

Cwt.

1847 8,040 1848 10,580 1849 9,252 1850 15,980 1851

About 500 cwt. are re-exported.

East India arrowroot is procured in part from _Curc.u.ma angustifolia_, known locally as Tikoor in the East, and a similar kind of starch is yielded by _C. Zerumbet_, _C. rubescens_, _C. leucorhiza_, and _Alpinia Galanga_, the Galangale root of commerce. _C. angustifolia_ grows abundantly on the Malabar coast, and is cultivated about the districts of Patna, Sagur and the south-west frontier, Mysore, Vizigapatam, and Canjam, Cochin and Tellicherry. It was discovered but a few years ago growing wild in the forests extending from the banks of the Sona to Nugpore.

The particles of East India arrowroot are very unequal in size, but on the average are larger than those of West India arrowroot.

Dr. Taylor, in his Topography of Dacca, speaks of fecula or starch being obtained from the Egyptian lotus (_Nymphaea lotus_), which is used by the native pract.i.tioners as a subst.i.tute for arrowroot.

Chinese arrowroot is said to be made from the root of _Nelumbium speciosum_.

The original Indian arrowroot is extracted at Travancore, according to Ainslie, from the root of the _Curc.u.ma angustifolia_. It is easily distinguished by its form, which is sometimes ovoid, sometimes elongated, of considerable size, rounded at one of the extremities, and terminating in a point at the other, often resembling a grain of rice.

The manufacture of arrowroot on the southern borders of the Everglades, at Key West, Florida, bids fair to become as extensive and as profitable as at Bermuda, whence, at present, we receive the bulk of our supplies. The wild root, which the Indians call Compti, grows spontaneously over an immense area of otherwise barren land. It is easily gathered, and is first peeled in large hoppers ingeniously contrived, and thrown into a cylinder and ground into an impalpable pulp. It is then washed and dried in the sun, baked and broken into small lumps, when it is ready for the market. The article is extensively used in the Eastern woollen and cotton establishments, as well as for family use. Arrowroot is cultivated in the interior of East Florida with great success. It is also cultivated to a considerable extent in Georgia, and is, I understand, a profitable crop.

The following is the process of manufacture:--The roots, when a year old, are dug up, and beaten in deep wooden mortars to a pulp; which is then put into a tub of clean water, well washed, and the fibrous part thrown away. The milky liquor being pa.s.sed through a sieve or coa.r.s.e cloth, is suffered to settle, and the clean water is drawn off; at the bottom of the vessel is a white ma.s.s, which is again mixed with clean water, and drained; lastly the ma.s.s is dried in the sun, and is pure starch. Arrowroot can be kept without spoiling for a very long time.

A considerable quant.i.ty of arrowroot is now produced in the Sandwich Islands. In 1841 arrowroot to the value of 3,320 dolls. was s.h.i.+pped, and in 1843, 35,140 lbs., valued at 1,405, was exported, princ.i.p.ally to Tepic and San Blas, where it is used as starch for linen.

A kind of arrowroot of very good quality was sent to the Great Exhibition of 1851, by Sir R. Schomburgk, which is obtained in St.

Domingo from the stems of a species of Zamia, called there Guanjiga; and the _Zamia Australis_, of Western Australia, yields even better fecula. The taste was unpleasant and salt, as if it had been immersed in lime. The other starch, from the Western Australian Zamia, in quality rivalled arrowroot. This fecula hangs together in chains, quite unlike the ordinary appearance of arrowroot when seen under the microscope.

The following figures show the exports of arrowroot from Bermuda:--

lbs. Value of the exports.

1830 18,174 -- 1831 77,153 -- 1832 34,833 -- 1833 44,651 -- 1834 54,471 -- 1835 65,500 -- 1836 -- -- 1841 91,230 -- 1842 136,610 -- 1843 151,757 8,682 1844 173,275 10,974 1845 224,480 8,084 1847 -- 4,716 1848 -- 4,747 1849 -- 6,760 1850 854,329 --

In the spring of 1851, 201,130 lbs. were s.h.i.+pped from Bermuda.

In 1843 the quant.i.ty of arrowroot in the rough state made in Bermuda was 1,110,500 lbs.

ARROWROOT EXPORTED FROM ANTIGUA TO