TIMBERS AND WOODS 299 



The United States occupies an important place in the manu- 

 facture of buttons from vegetable ivory. Of the 50,000,000 

 pounds of vegetable ivory nuts exported from South Amer- 

 ica annually, more than 27,000,000 pounds come to the United 

 States. There are reported to be 23 button factories using this 

 material in this country, the chief centers being Rochester, 

 Brooklyn, Newark, and Springfield, Massachusetts. 



The vegetable ivory nuts are somewhat flattened and about 

 2 inches in the longest diameter. The vegetable ivory nut 

 contains a small cavity and the tissue immediately surrounding 

 the cavity is softer and more likely to show defects than the 

 outer portion of the nut. A chip to be used for making but- 

 tons is sawed from either side of the nut and the rest of the 

 material becomes waste. From vegetable ivory nuts, but- 

 tons are prepared varying in size from % to 1% inches in 

 diameter. The process of sawing, shaping, polishing and dye- 

 ing vegetable ivory buttons has been carefully developed in the 

 button factories of the United States and the industry is con- 

 stantly growing. 



In the technical utilization of vegetable ivory for button 

 manufacture it has been found that there is a shrinkage of 650 

 pounds per ton in drying the nuts and removing the shells. 

 In sawing out the chips for use in button manufacture there 

 is a waste from sawdust and cores of another 400 pounds. A 

 ton of nuts, therefore, yields approximately 950 pounds of 

 material available for making buttons. Recently efforts have 

 been made to find a use for this waste material. Vegetable 

 ivory sawdust has been used in Germany as an adulterant of 

 coffee along with ground date seeds and other material. An 

 analysis of vegetable ivory sawdust shows that it contains 10.6 

 per cent, of water, 1.95 per cent, ash, 0.96 per cent, fat, 3.28 

 per cent, protein, and 83.21 per cent, fiber and nitrogen-free 

 extract. A test of this material as cattle feed at the Mas- 

 sachusetts Experiment Station indicated that it is fairly di- 

 gestible and possesses some value as a feed. 



