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The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom by P. L. Simmonds

P >> P. L. Simmonds >> The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom




We import on the average about 20,000 quarters of beans, peas, &c.,
from Ireland, 450,000 quarters of beans and 200,000 quarters of peas
from foreign countries.

The land under cultivation with pulse, and the crops raised, have been
estimated as follows:--

Acres. Quarters.
England 500,000 1,875,000
Ireland 130,000 540,000
Scotland 50,000 150,000
------- ---------
680,000 2,565,000

This is of course exclusive of garden cultivation. The average produce
of beans per acre in England is 33/4 quarters, 31/2 in Ireland, and three
in Scotland.

The price of beans per quarter in the last ten years has ranged from
39s. to 27s. the quarter; peas from 40s. 6d. to 27s. 6d.

_Algaroba beans_.--The seed pods or bean of the carob-tree (_Ceratonia
siliqua_, or _Prosopis pallida_?) a tree common in the Levant and
South of Europe, are used as food. The pods contain a large proportion
of sweet fecula, and are frequently used by singers, being considered
to improve the voice. The name of St. John's Head has been applied to
them, from the supposition that they were the wild honey spoken of in
Scripture as the food of John the Baptist. About 40,000 quintals of
these carobs are annually exported from Crete. During the Peninsular
war, the horses of our cavalry were principally fed upon these
algaroba seeds. The pods of the West India locust tree, _Hymenaea
courbaril_, also supply a nutritious matter.

That well known sauce, Soy, is made in some parts of the East, from a
species of the Dolichos bean (_Soja hispida_), which grows in China
and Japan. In Java it is procured from the _Phaseolus radiatus_. The
beans are boiled soft, with wheat or barley of equal quantities, and
left for three months to ferment; salt and water are then added, when
the liquor is pressed and strained. Good soy is agreeable when a few
years old; the Japan soy is superior to the Chinese. Large quantities
are shipped for England and America. The Dolichos bean is much
cultivated in Japan, where various culinary articles are prepared from
it; but the principal are a sort of butter, termed _mico_, and a
pickle called _sooja_.

1,108 piculs of soy were shipped from Canton in 1844, for London,
British India, and Singapore. 100 jars, or about 50 gallons of soy,
were received at Liverpool in 1850. The price is about 6s. per gallon
in the London market.


THE SAGO PALMS, BREAD-FRUIT, &c.

Sago, and starchy matter allied to it, is obtained from many palms. It
is contained in the cellular tissue of the stem, and is separated by
bruising and elutriation. From the soft stem of _Cycas circinalis_, a
kind of sago is produced in the East and West Indies. The finest is,
however, procured from the stems of _Sagus laevis_ (_S. inermis_, of
Roxburgh), a native of Borneo and Sumatra; and _Arenga saccharifera_,
or _Gomutus saccharifus_, of Rumphius. The _Saguerus Rumphii_, or
_Metroxylon Sagus_, which is found in the Eastern Islands of the
Indian Ocean, yields a feculent matter. After the starchy substance is
washed out of the stems of these palms, it is then granulated so as to
form sago. The last-mentioned palm also furnishes a large supply of
sugar. Sago as well as sugar, and a kind of palm wine, are procured
from _Caryota urens_.

In China sago is obtained from _Rhapis flabelliformis_, a dwarfish
palm; and some sago is made from it for native use in Travancore,
Mysore, and Wynaad, and the jungles in the East Indies.

The trunk of the sago palm is five or six feet round, and it grows to
the height of about 20 feet. It can only be propagated by seed. It
flourishes best in bogs and swampy marshes; a good plantation being
often a bog, knee deep. The pith producing the sago is seldom of use
till the tree is fourteen or fifteen years old; and the tree does not
live longer than thirty years. Mr. Crawfurd says there are four
varieties of this palm; the cultivated, the wild, one distinguished by
long spines on the branches, and a fourth destitute of these spines,
and called by the natives female sago. This and the cultivated species
afford the best farina; the spiny variety, which has a slender trunk,
and the wild tree, yield but an inferior quality of sago. The
farinaceous matter afforded by each plant is very considerable, 500
lbs. being a frequent quantity, while 300 lbs. may be taken as the
common average produce of each tree.

Supposing the plants set at a distance of ten feet apart, an acre
would contain 435 trees, which, on coming to maturity in fifteen
years, would yield at the before-mentioned rate 120,500 lbs. annually
of farinaceous matter. The sago meal, in its raw state, will keep good
about a month. The Malays and natives of the Eastern Islands, with
whom it forms the chief article of sustenance, partially bake it in
earthenware moulds into small hard cakes, which will keep for a
considerable time. In Java the word "saga" signifies bread. The sago
palm (_Metroxylon Sagus_) is one of the smallest of its tribe, seldom
reaching to more than 30 feet in height, and grows only in a region
extending west to Celebes and Borneo, north to Mindanao, south to
Timor, and east to Papua. Ceram is its chief seat, and there large
forests of it are found. The edible farina is the central pith, which
varies considerably in different trees, and as to the time required
for its attaining proper maturity. It is eaten by the natives in the
form of pottage. A farina of an inferior kind is supplied by the
Gomuti palm (_Borassus gomutus_), another tree peculiar to the Eastern
Archipelago growing in the valleys of hilly tracts.

At so great a distance it is difficult to decide as to which of these
trees really produce the ordinary sagos of commerce, for there are
several kinds. Planche, in an excellent memoir on the sagos, has
described six species, which he distinguishes by the names of the
places from which they come. Preferring to classify them according to
their characters, M. Mayet distinguishes only three species.

The first he denominates Ancient sago, which comes from different
parts, and varies much in color. It comprehends--1st, Maldivian sago
of Planche, in spherical globules, of two or three millimetres in
diameter, translucid, of an unequal pinkish white color, very hard and
insipid. 2nd, New Guinea sago, of Planche, in rather smaller globules,
of a bright red color on one side, and white on the other. 3rd. Grey
sago of the Moluccas or brown sago of the English; of unequal
globules, from one to three millimetres in diameter, opaque, of a dull
grey color on one side, and whitish on the other. This grey color
probably arises from long keeping and humidity. 4th. Large grey sago
of the Moluccas, exactly resembling No. 3, only that the globules are
from four to eight millimetres in diameter. 5th. Fine white sago of
the Moluccas; entirely resembling No. 3, only that it is purely white,
owing to the complete edulcoration of the fecula of which it is made.

Whatever may be the places of origin of these sagos, they all possess
the following characters--

Rounded globules, generally spherical, all isolated, very hard,
elastic, and difficult to break or powder. The globules put into
water, generally swell to twice their original size, but do not adhere
together.

_Second sage_.--This species corresponds with the pinkish sago of the
Moluccas of Planche. It is in very small globules, less regular than
those of the "first sago," and sometimes stuck together to the number
of two or three. Soaked in water, it swells to double its volume.

Third Species.--_Tapioca sago_.---This name has been applied to a
species of sago now abundant in commerce, because it bears the same
relation to the ancient or first sago, and even to the preceding sago,
that tapioca bears to "Moussache," which is the fecula of the manioc,
_Janipha manihot (Manihot utilissima_).

Whilst the two preceding species of sago, whatever may have been
stated to the contrary, have been neither baked nor submitted to any
heating process, as is proved by the perfect state of nearly all their
grains of fecula, this species has been subjected to the action of
heat while in a state of a moist paste. This sago is not in spherical
globules, like the two preceding species, or at least there are but
few of the globules of that form; it is rather in the form of very
small irregular tubercular masses, formed by the adherence of
different numbers of the primary globules. The facility with which
this sago swells and is divided by water, has occasioned it to be
preferred as an article of food to the ancient sago. It has been
described by Planche under the name of the white sago of the Moluccas,
and by Dr. Pereira under the name of pearl sago.

Bennet, in his work on "Ceylon and its Capabilities," (1843), states
that sago is procured from the granulated pith of the talipot palm,
_Corypha umbraculifera_.

The _Sagus Rumphii_, Willdenow, and _S. farinifera_, Gaertner.--Before
maturity, and previous to the formation of the fruit, the stem
consists of a thin hard wall, about two inches thick, and of an
enormous volume of tissue (commonly termed the _medulla_ or _pith_),
from which the farina or sago is obtained. As the fruit forms, the
farinaceous medulla disappears, and when the tree, attains full
maturity, the stem is no more than a hollow shell. Sago occurs in
commerce in two states, pulverulent and granulated. 1. The meal or
flour as imported in the form of a fine amylaceous powder. It is
whitish, with a buffy or reddish tint. Its odor is faint, but somewhat
unpleasant and musty. 2. Granulated sago is of two kinds, pearl and
common brown. The former occurs in small hard grains, not exceeding in
size that of a pin's head, inodorous, and having little taste. They
have a brownish or pinkish yellow tint, and are somewhat translucent.
By the aid of a solution of chloride of lime they can be bleached, and
rendered perfectly white. The dealers, it is said, pay L7 per ton for
bleaching it. Common sago occurs in larger grains, about the size of
pearl barley, which are brownish white.

Sago is an article of exportation to Europe, and is also shipped to
India, principally Bengal, and to China. It is in its granulated form
that it is usually sent abroad. The best sago is the produce of Siak,
on the north coast of Sumatra. This is of a light brown color, the
grains large, and not easily broken. The sago of Borneo is the next in
value; it is whiter, but more friable. The produce of the Moluccas,
though greatest in quantity, is of the smallest estimation. The cost
of granulated sago, from the hands of the grower or producer, was,
according to Mr. Crawfurd, only a dollar a picul. It fetches in the
London market--common pearl, 20s. to 26s. the cwt., sago flour, 20s.
the cwt. The Chinese of Malacca and Singapore have invented a process
by which they refine sago, so as to give it a fine pearly lustre, and
it is from thence we now principally derive our supplies of this
article. The exports from Singapore in 1847 exceeded 61/2 million
pounds, but are now much larger.

The following is a description of the manufacture of this important
article of commerce:--The tree being cut down, the exterior bark is
removed, and the heart, or pith of the palm, a soft, white, spongy and
mealy substance is gathered; and for the purpose of distant
transportation, it is put into conical bags, made of plantain leaves,
and neatly tied up. In that state it is called by the Malays _Sangoo
tampin_, or bundles of sago; each bundle weighs about 30 lbs.

On its arrival at Singapore it is purchased by the Chinese
manufacturers of sago, and is thus treated:--Upon being carried to the
manufactory, the plantain-leaf covering is removed, and the raw sago,
imparting a strong acid odor, is bruised, and is put into large tubs
of cold spring water, where it undergoes a process of purification by
being stirred, suffered to repose, and again re-stirred in
newly-introduced water. When well purified thus, it is taken out of
the tubs by means of small vessels; and being mixed with a great deal
of water, the liquid is gently poured upon a large and slightly
inclined trough, about ten inches in height and width; and in the
descent towards the depressed end, the sago is deposited in the bottom
of the trough, whilst the water flows into another large tub, where
what may remain of sago is finally deposited. As the strata of
deposited sago increases in the trough, small pieces of slates are
adjusted to its lower end to prevent the escape of the substance. When
by this pouring process the trough becomes quite full of sago, it is
then removed to make room for a fresh one, whilst the former one is
put out into the air, under cover, for a short time; and on its being
well dried, the sago within is cut into square pieces and taken out to
be thoroughly dried, under cover, to protect it from the sun. It has
then lost the acid smell already noticed, and has become quite white.
After one day's drying thus, it is taken into what may be called the
manufactory, a long shed, open in front and on one side, and closed at
the other and in the rear. Here the lumps of sago are broken up, and
are reduced into an impalpable flour, which is passed through a sieve.
The lumps, which are retained by the sieve are put back to be
re-bruised, whilst that portion which has passed is collected, and is
placed in a long cloth bag, the gathered ends of which, like those of
a hammock, are attached to a pole, which pole being suspended to a
beam of the building by a rope, one end of it is sharply thrown
forward with a particular jerk, by means of which the sago within is
shortly granulated very fine, and becomes what is technically termed
"pearled." It is then taken out and put into iron vessels, called
_quallies_, for the purpose of being dried. These quallies are small
elliptical pans, and resemble in form the sugar coppers of the West
Indies, and would each hold about five gallons of fluid. They are set
a little inclining, and in a range, over a line of furnaces, each one
having its own fire. Before putting in the sago to be dried, a cloth,
which contains a small quantity of hog's-lard, or some oily substance,
is hastily passed into the qually, and the sago is equally quickly put
into it, and a Chinese laborer who attends it, commences stirring it
with a _pallit_, and thus continues his labor during the few minutes
necessary to expel the moisture contained in the substance. Thus each
qually, containing about ten pounds of sago, requires the attendance
of a man. The sago, on being taken off the fire, is spread out to cool
on large tables, after which it is fit to be packed in boxes, or put
into bags for shipment; and is known in commerce under the name of
"pearl sago." Thus the labor of fifteen or twenty men is required to
do that which, with the aid of simple machinery, might be done much
better by three or four laborers. A water-wheel would both work a
stirring machine and cause an inclined cylinder to revolve over a
fire, for the purpose of drying the sago, in the manner used for corn,
meal, and flour in America, or for roasting coffee and chicory in
England. But the Chinese have no idea of substituting artificial
means, when manual ones are obtainable.

A considerable quantity of sago is exported from Singapore in the
state of flour. The whole quantity made and exported there exceeds, on
the average, 2,500 tons annually. The quantity shipped from this
entrepot is shown by the annexed returns, nearly all of which was
grown and manufactured in the settlement. The estimated value for
export is set down at 14s. per picul of 11/4 cwt.

EXPORTS FROM SINGAPORE.
Piculs
1840-41 Pearl sago 41,146
" Sago flour 33,552
1841-42 Pearl sago 46,225
" Sago flour 7,447
1842-43 Pearl sago 25,306
" Sago flour 4,838
1843-44 Pearl sago 14,266
" Sago flour 14,067
1844-45 Pearl sago 18,472
" Sago flour 36,141
1845-46 Pearl sago 19,333
" Sago flour 26,925
1846-47 Pearl sago 40,765
" Sago flour 9,025

Imports of sago into the United Kingdom, and quantity retained for
home consumption:--

Imports. Home consumption.
Cwts. Cwts.
1826 9,644 2,565
1830 2,677 3,385
1834 25,763 13,827
1838 18,627 28,396
1842 45,646 50,994
1846 38,595 45,671
1848 65,000
1849 83,711 72,741
1850 89,884 83,954


THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE.

_Artocarpus incisa_.--This tree is less cultivated than would be
supposed from its useful properties. In the West Indies and the Indian
Islands, where it has been introduced from its native place, the South
Sea Islands, it is held in very little consideration, the graminea,
tuberous roots, and farinaceous plants being more easily and readily
cultivated. There are two or three varieties known in the Asiatic
regions. The properties of this tree are thus enumerated by
Hooker:--The fruit serves for food; clothes are made from the fibres
of the inner bark; the wood is used for building houses and making
boats; the male catkins are employed as tinder; the leaves for table
cloths and for wrapping provisions in; and the viscid milky juice
affords birdlime.

_A. integrifolia_is the Jack or Jacca, the fruit of which attains a
large size, sometimes weighing 30 lbs., but is inferior in quality to
the bread-fruit.

The nuts or fruit of _Brosimum Alicastrum_, an evergreen shrub, native
of Jamaica, are nutritious and agreeable articles of food. When boiled
with salt fish, pork or beef, they have frequently been the support of
the negroes and poorer sorts of white people in times of scarcity, and
proved a wholesome and not unpleasant food; when roasted it eats
something like our common chesnut, and is called bread-nut.

_Kafir Bread_.--According to Thunberg, the Hottentots being very
little acquainted with agriculture, or with the use of the cerealia,
and subsisting principally upon wild bulbs and fruits, obtain food
also from _Encephalartos caffer_, a species of _Zamia_, with a
cylindrical trunk, the thickness of a man's body, and about seven feet
high. Having cut down a tree, they took out the pith, that nearly
fills its trunk, and which abounds in mucilage and an amylaceous
fluid; after keeping this for some time buried under ground in the
skin of an animal, they reduced it by pounding and kneading into a
kind of paste; and then baked it in hot ashes, in the form of round
cakes, nearly an inch thick. The Dutch colonists, in consequence of
this practice of the natives, called the plant brood-boon, which
signifies literally bread tree.

THE PLANTAIN AND BANANA.

The several varieties of the edible plantain which are known and
cultivated throughout the West Indies, Africa, and in the East are all
reducible to two classes, viz., the Plantain and the Banana (_Musa
Paradisiaca_and _sapientum_). The difference between these two plants
is even so slight as to be scarcely specific; it is therefore most
probable that there was originally but one stock, from which they
have, by cultivation and change of locality, been derived.

The tiger plantain (_M. maculata_) and the black ditto (_M.
sylvestris_) are cultivated in Jamaica. The whole of the species and
varieties of the tribe are what are called polygamous monoecious
plants, each individual tree bearing the male and female organs of
reproduction.

The plantain and its varieties invariably bear male, female and
hermaphrodite flowers within the same spathe, all of them being
imperfect and consequently unproductive of seed. An individual may,
even from excess of culture, moisture, &c., be entirely incapable of
flowering. During the prevalence of a disease or blight among the
plantain walks of Demerara in the years 1844 and 1845, it was
seriously proposed to introduce male plantains, or obtain fresh stock
by seed.

It is, therefore, necessary to determine with exactness, if possible,
whether the Plantain or Banana, (whichever be the parent stock) exists
anywhere at present, or has been known to have existed as a perfect
plant, that is bearing fertile seeds; or, whether it has always
existed in the imperfect state, that is, incapable of being procreated
by seed, the only state in which it at present exists in our colonies.

Whether Linnaeus be right in his conjecture (Spec. Plant, 1763) that
the "Bihai" (_Heliconia humilis_), a native of Caraccas, which
produces fertile seeds, is the stock plant of the plantain, it is
almost impossible to ascertain; but the absence of any description of
a wild seed-bearing plantain, renders it highly probable that the
cultivated species are hybrids produced long ago. The banana, from
time immemorial, has been the food of the philosophers and sages of
the East, and almost all travellers throughout the tropics have
described these plants exactly as they are known to us, either as
sweet fruit eaten raw, or a farinaceous vegetable roasted or boiled.
It is remarkable that the plantain and banana should be indigenous, or
at all events cultivated for ages both in the Old and New World.
Numerous South American travellers describe some one of these plants
as being indigenous articles of food among the natives, thus showing
(if the plantain and its varieties be hybrids) a communication between
the tropics of America, Asia and Africa, long before the time of
Columbus. The older writers on the colony of Guiana, as Hartsinck,
Bellin and others, consider the plantain to be a native. It is
remarkable that Sir R. Schomburgk, during his travels, found a large
species of edible plantain far in the interior. It appears, therefore,
from all the investigations that have been made, that the plantain is
either a hybrid, or its power of production from seed has been
destroyed long ago by cultivation, and that it is not known to exist
anywhere in a perfect state; in which case any attempt to improve the
present stock by the introduction of suckers from elsewhere, must be
totally futile. Mr. A. Garnett recommends the following system of
cultivation, as calculated to prevent the blight. The walk or
plantation is to be formed into beds 36 feet wide, divided by open
drains 30 inches deep. Two rows of plantains to be planted upon each
bed at 18 feet distance, both between and along the rows, to afford a
clear ventilation to the enlarging plants, and so soon as the
plantation has been established, the space of land between each row to
be shovel-ploughed 12 inches deep; the same to be repeated annually,
and upon the interspace may be planted maize, yams, sugar cane, or
eddoes, and the whole kept clear at all times. Thus, with the
conjoined principles of good tillage, free ventilation, and mixed
crops, the blight may yet be successfully combated.

A great diminution in the cultivation of the plantain has been
occasioned in British Guiana by this blight or disease, which first
made its destructive appearance in Essequibo, upwards of thirty years
ago, where its ravages increased with such fatal intensity as to
render the profitable growth of the plant almost hopeless; and up to
this hour no one has been able to discover the immediate or remote
cause of this extraordinary vegetable endemic; whether arising from
the action of insects among the sheathes of the petioles of the
leaves, or in the soil, or from organic decay of the plant, remains
without solution. The last-named cause seems to be rejected, by the
fact that the fructification of the plant is as healthy and abundant
in parts of the colony where the blight does not prevail, both in
number and size of the fruit upon the spike, as at any former period.
On the east coast of Demerara, both the plantain and banana have been
grown for more than twenty years upon the same land, without any
attack of the disease, and without any extraneous manure or even lime
having been applied, and the plants still exhibit great luxuriance,
and produce their former weight of fruit.

The foliage of the plantain affords food and bedding, and is used for
thatch, making paper, and basket making; and from its petioles is
obtained a fine and durable thread. The tops of the young plants are
eaten as a delicate vegetable; the fermented juice of the trunk
produces an agreeable wine.

The abundance and excellence of the nutritive food which the plants of
this valuable genus supply are well known; but of the numerous uses to
which they are applied I may mention, the following:--

The fruit is served up both raw and stewed; slices fried are also
considered a delicacy. Plantains are sometimes boiled and eaten with
salt meat, and pounded and made into puddings, and used in various
other ways. In their ripe state these fruits contain much starchy
matter. From their spurious stems, the fibres of the spiral vessels
may be pulled out in such quantity as to be used for tinder. _M.
textilis_ yields a fibre which is used in India in the manufacture of
fine muslins, and the coarser woody tissue is exported in large
quantities from Manila, under the name of white rope or Manila hemp.
Horses, cattle, swine, and other domestic animals are fed upon the
fruit, leaves, and succulent trunks.

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Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Stephen King fan publishes Shining's Jack Torrance's novel
Three Women was first heard as a radio drama and then published as a poem. Robert Shaw explains his desire to stage the piece as it was intended

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A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

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