126 PHILIPPINE RESINS, GUMS, AND OILS 
sun until the kernels loosen sufficiently, which may be ascertained by. 
occasionally cracking a few nuts for trial. The drying takes from five 
to ten days or more, depending upon the condition of the weather; the 
nuts are then cracked and the kernels removed. This process is very 
slow, although the kernel usually comes out whole and is of the best quality. 
Aguilar has developed the following method: Nuts are heated 
in an oven at 95 degrees for three or four hours and then 
placed in cold water and left overnight. By the next morning 
most of the shells have burst and the kernels are picked out 
without much difficulty. This method, he says, has no injurious 
effect on the oil. 
The following methods of removing the shells from the seeds 
are in practice in the Province of Laguna. The seeds are‘ 
placed over a fire for from 72 to 120 hours, at the end of which 
time the shells are cracked, or they are spread in the sunshine 
until cracks are visible in the shells. In both cases, after the 
shells crack, the seeds are thrown against a hard object, prefer- 
ably a large stone, when the shells fall off in pieces. These 
methods give brown kernels. 
It has been suggested that the nuts with the shells could be 
crushed and ground in an oil mill and the oil expressed from 
the ground material. Aguilar believes, however, that the best 
method is to separate the kernel from the shell and then ex- 
tract the oil; as about 20 kilos more oil per ton of nuts may 
be extracted from the kernel than from the crushed nuts. At* 
present the Chinese manufacturers sell the cake, which is left 
after the oil is extracted from the nuts, at a good profit. Ac- 
cording to the results obtained by Aguilar (Table 14), the fer- 
tilizing value of the cake left from the crushed nuts would be 
so much reduced as to make it almost useless as a fertilizer. 
« 
TABLE 14.—Fertilizing value of lumbang (Aleurites moluccana) cake. 
Cake | Cake 
- from 
Constituents. ae crushed 
nuts. 




Per cent.|Per cent. 
Moisture reese ak 2 a eR a re ee pag als: 8. 46 
Nitrogen (No)eeh so: 2.5. Si te ee ee ee ee Ses oe | 8. 86 1.25 
| Batis GKe@) se th 0 8 2 Cos le Ss EMR as ea Ss hog eee 1.67 0. 68 
| ‘Phosphorous: (P20) a= 22-3 se ee ee ee eee 1.02 | 0.25 
Aguilar has found that the nuts of Alewrites moluccana may 
be stored a year or more without any appreciable change in ¢ 
the amount or composition of the oil. However, when the ker- 
nels without the shells are stored, they are apt to be very severely 





