86 THE WEEDS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



Its use as a fodder is new to me. 



"The Castor Oil Industry," by Charles M. Daugherty, Year-look, U.S. 

 Dept. Agric., 1904, p. 287, gives an admirable account of this substance. At 

 that time the use of castor oil in the United States, being only measured 

 by hundreds, of thousands of gallons, was small in comparison with that of 

 cotton-seed oil or linseed oil, which ran into tens of millions. At the same 

 time, it is a most important oil. 



It is used in dyeing and printing cotton goods, and the well-known 

 Turkey red owes its fastness to castor oil. Its use as a domestic remedy is 

 proverbial, although the quantity so employed is diminishing since the rising 

 generation prefer something more palatable, even if it is not so efficacious. 

 The work quoted gives an account of its minor uses. 



Then is given an account of its manufacture, and the residue, known as 

 " Castor pomace " is a valuable fertiliser for potatoes, wheat, oats, and 

 maize. 



Follows an account of the sources of supply of castor beans and their 

 distribution. It is pointed out that the one great castor bean-producing 

 country of the world is British India. The most important paper on castor 

 beans that I have seen in recent years is entitled, " Breeding New Castor 

 Beans," with the sub-headings, " Castor oil now becoming of immense com- 

 mercial importance as motor-lubricant Careful breeding of varieties having 

 desired attributes necessary to produce best commercial seed Many 

 characters show Mendelian behaviour." 



The paper is by Orland E. White, Curator of Plant Breeding, Brooklyn 

 Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, New York, and is published in the Journal of 

 Heredity for May-June, 1918, pp. 195-200. 



It is stated that the growing of the beans used to be a useful local industry 

 in the middle-western United States, but that over-production and competi- 

 tion with cheap Hindu labour soon made it unprofitable. The United 

 States chiefly imports its castor beans from India. Castor oil has proved 

 itself valuable as an aeroplane motor lubricant. 



The author has some splendid illustrations, especially plates of beans, to 

 show (a) variation in size, shape, pattern, and colouring, (fr) commercial 

 types of castor beans, (c) results from crossing diiferent types. There are 

 also plates of (d) male and female flowers of the castor bean, and (e) loose 

 and compact fruiting spikes. 



The paper is an admirable brief resume of original work done. 



In Australia, even more than in the United States, castor bean growers, 

 when they have got over the difficulty of deciding on the most profitable 

 sorts, are still faced with the competition of , the cheaply-paid natives of 

 India. 



Will it be a Profitable Crop in New South Wales? The fact that it is a 

 weed over such large areas shows that it can be easily cultivated, and it may 

 be that the best way of getting rid of the pest is to harness it in the service 

 of man. But in order to do this, the utilisation of the weed-form may have 



