128 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. — Fertilizivg value of lumbang (Aleurites nioluccana) cake. 



Constituents. 



Cake 



from 



kernel. 



Cake 



from 



crushed 



nuts. 



Moisture 



Nitrogen (N2) 



Potash (K2O) 



Phosphorous (P2O5). 



Per cent. 



11.13 



8.86 



1.67 



1.02 



Per cent, 

 8.46 

 1.25 

 0.68 

 0.25 



Aguilar has found that the nuts of Aleurites moluccanu 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 



