320 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[October i, 1884. 



ALGIC CELLULOSE. 



This substance bleaches easily ami uuder pressure be- 

 comes very hard, and cau be turned and polished with 

 facility. It also makes a good paper, tough and trans- 

 parent, but with no fibre. Alone, or mixed with algin and 

 linseed oil or shellac, it may be used as a non-conductor 

 of electricity, where a cheap material is required. 



Although there is still a small portiou of the plant not 

 accounted for, which will, I hope, also soon be worked 

 out, I think enough has been discovered to justify the 

 following conclusions : — 



1. The only way to effectually utilise sea-weed is to 

 import it in the raw state. 



2. By following the wet process the additional cost is 

 fully made up by the greatly increased amount of iodine 

 and salts obtained from the water solution, leaving two- 

 thirds of the plant for further treatment. 



3. That hy extracting from this the algin and the cel- 

 lulose we utilise the whole plant, and obtain two new pro- 

 ducts of considerable commercial importance. 



4. That the process is extremely simple and requires 

 no extravagant plaut ; nor do operations on the large scale 

 present any serious practical difficulties. 



5. That the new substance, algin, has very remarkable 

 properties, which may find many applications not yet known, 

 when it can be put on the market. 



6. That the demand for such a substance in fixing and 

 mordanting fabrics alone is enormous. 



Our annual export of textile manufactures and yarns is 

 valued at £40,000,000, or more than half the value of our 

 total exports ; and a large portion of this requires some 

 dressing material to fit it for the market. We import 

 about £200,000 worth of gum arabic, a good deal of which 

 is used for this purpose; and the war in the Soudan is 

 raising its price and making it scarce. 



7. That the supply of raw material is almost unlimited. 

 Seaweed damaged by rain is equally available for the manu- 

 facture of algin. 



I will only add that I bring forward this process with 

 some confidence, as the result of a quarter of a century's 

 scientific work, and an almost equally long practical ex- 

 perience — an experience gained in a wide and wild school. 

 I am satisfied, whether it may be giveu to me to carry 

 it out or not to the extent it should be, it will become 

 the process of the near future. It immediately possesses 

 the advantage of obtaining known marketable products of 

 considerable value, and it bids fair to open up a new in- 

 dustry which may become one of large extent, supplying 

 ms it will new products for which there is an absolute 

 want. On the other hand, the importance of attaching 

 a marketable value to seaweed can scarce'y be overrated. 

 No Royal Commission will give the crofters and cottars 

 on the shores of the Hebrides aud the West of Ireland 

 anything like the satisfaction that the offer of £1 per ton 

 for all the seaweed they could gather would. In all the, e 

 places the sea quest might soon become more important 

 than the land question. Moreover, a shipping trade in 

 the raw material itself, is a great benefit to the out lying 

 islands where it is obtained, it necessitates cartage, it t. nils 

 to the improvement of roads anil harbours, it improves 

 communication by bringing steamers, and necessarily biings 

 the people closer to civilisation, and the great centres of 

 industry. This is especially the case where the expend- 

 iture of every thousand pounds on the raw material means 

 the expenditure of about as much on carriage. I have 

 reason to know that the lairds of all these shores would 

 not be entirely dissatisfied with such a result, We should 

 all share in the satisfaction ol knowing that one more 

 waste product had been effectually utilised. 



DISCUSSION. 

 Dr. Redwood had listened with great interest to this 

 paper, and all the more so from his earlj associations 

 with the author, and from a recollection of Ins previous 

 paper on his improved method for obtaining iodine Inn, 

 seaweed. It was very satisfactory to find that Mr. Stan- 

 ford bad persevered in the subject he then took up. and 

 had succeeded in obtaining from seaweed these new inn- 

 ducts he had described. It was, perhaps, to be regretted 

 that, owing to other sources of iodine having been dis- 

 covered, his process tor its manufacture from kelp had 

 been to a great extent superseded; but that being so, it 



was all the more satisfactory to find there was a prob- 

 ability of rendering this industry advantageous from the 

 discovery of another and very valuable product. Mr. Stan- 

 ford drew his attention to the product some months ago, 

 and he had satisfied himself experimentally of the facility 

 with which algin could be isolated, whilst the author had 

 shown that evening how extensive was the field for its 

 application. 



Mr. E. M. Holmes said the thanks of the whole country 

 were due to Mr. Stanford for suggesting what might 

 prove a very extensive inuustry, and one which might 

 benefit the poorer classes of the population in districts 

 where at present many of them were nearly starving. He 

 had recently, at Swanage, noticed cows and donkeys on 

 the beach eating the seaweed thrown up on the shore, 

 and it occurred to him that seaweed might perhaps be 

 utilised as food for animals. 'When they considered the 

 immense amount of seaweed sold in China aud Japan, it 

 was astonishing that so small a use was made of it as 

 food in this country. Laver (Porphyra vulgaris) was used 

 to some extent in Devonshire, and it was by no means dis- 

 agreeable in taste. Mannite, which was another product 

 mentioned by Mr. Stanford, was principally obtained from 

 Italy ; but some alga; contained it in considerable quantity, 

 and he saw no reason why it should not be utilised. With 

 regard to the use of seaweed as manure, he knew it was 

 constantly so employed in the Channel Islands, and we 

 certainly obtaiued our earliest vegetables from those islands. 

 He thought it was an error to regard the manurial value 

 of seaweed merely from the point of view of the salts 

 which they contained. Gardeners distinguished between 

 what they called live and dead soil, live soil being that 

 in which the decomposition of either animal or vegetable 

 matter was going on, and this process apparently had an 

 influence in causing changes of a chemical nature in the 

 soil which promoted the growth of plants ; it could there- 

 fore be reasonably supposed that the alga; might be more 

 beneficial in the fresh state than when dried. He under- 

 stood Mr. Stanford to say that the alga; from deeper 

 water contained more iodine than those which grew nearer 

 the shore, but in the table given, the largest amount was 

 from the Laminaria stenophyllet, which always grew higher 

 on the shore than the Laminaria digitata. Another inter- 

 esting point was tha,t some of the gigantic alg;e contained 

 less iodine than the common Lamiuarias of our own shores. 

 In the " Flora Antarctica," published by Dr. Hooker some 

 years ago, it was stated that Dr. Stenhouse had analysed 

 these alga.-, and had found in them a large quantity of 

 iodine, anil in one of them a considerable quantity of 

 mannite ; but probably so much was not known at that 

 time about iodine, and no doubt Mr. Stanford's analyses 

 were the more correct. But the interesting auestious re- 

 mained, where the iodine came from, and whether as he 

 believed Mr. Stanford thought, it came from the warm 

 waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He should like to ask Mr. 

 Stanford to what he attributed the strong odour of sea 

 water possessed by the J&nteromorpha, as he stated that 

 contained no iodine. To show the rapid growth of the 

 Fuci, he might refer to a statement in Dr. Landsliorough's 

 little book on marine alga j , that at one place in Scotland, 

 where the rocks had been scraped quite bare, the alga; 

 grew to a length of b ft. in six months. The idea of 

 keeping seaweeds in a silo seemed a very excellent one, 

 because under certain circumstances, as in wet weather, 

 it was almost impossible to keep it without losing the 

 salts. With regard to the use of algin for pharmaceutical 

 purposes, it had already been employed for emulsifying 

 cod-liver oil, aud was found very superior to other agents, 

 especially as it contained a small quantity of iodine. Some 

 time ago he read that some parts of the coast of Maur- 

 itius was covered at certain times with immense quantities 

 of foam, caused by mucilage apparently derived from 

 Laminaria ; aud it occurred to him that perhaps the algte 

 might be employed for producing a head on beer in pre- 

 ference to quillaia bark, which he understood was now 

 used for that purpose, and which must be of a somewhat 

 irritating character from containing saponin; whereas the 

 algin would certainly be of a harmless character. It 

 occurred to him from the insolubility of the salts of alginic 

 acid, that it might perhaps be useful for waterproofing 

 purposes. He should also like to ask whether textile fabrics 

 became less combustible from its use. With regard *•> its 



