ALOE 11 



casionally used as fodder for animals, but more often 

 as a fertilizer. When the aloe field has its own brick 

 furnace, the juice is at once boiled down in a large 

 copper kettle heated by direct fire. The mass is stirred 

 constantly, and when it has reached a certain consist- 

 ence, is ladled into wooden casks where it is allowed 

 to cool, and then the mass is prepared for shipment. 

 When there is no furnace in the field, however, the bar- 

 rels of juice are hauled to special 'boiling houses,' 

 where the boiling is conducted after a sufficient number 

 of barrels have arrived. If the amount of juice is not 

 sufficient to warrant boiling, the aloe juice is sometimes 

 left for weeks, and as a result fermentation has been 

 known to take place, certainly to the detriment of the 

 commercial product, although it has been asserted that 

 aloe juice is not liable to ferment. 



"In Aruba there is only one boiling house that evap- 

 orates the juice by steam instead of by direct fire, where, 

 as Mr. C. G. Lloyd learned on his journey through the 

 West Indies, the vacuum pan is now employed. This 

 place seems increasingly to supply the bulk of the Cura- 

 C.ao aloes, as the following table of exports from the 

 Dutch West Indies from 1884 to 1887 would show: 



1884 1885 1886 1887 



Curasao 2,080 500 kilograms 



Bonaire 19,083 5,821 18,640 2,075 



Aruba 98,960 123,115 158,011 189,925 



"It has been customary in trade circles to distinguish 

 by name Socotrine, Barbadoes, Curasao, and Cape aloes, 

 as well as certain commercial forms of minor impor- 

 tance, such as Natal, Indian and Mocha aloes. 



"The term hepatic aloes has been employed to classify 



