26 WATTLES AND WATTLE -BARKS. 



Mr. H. Heaton (Australian Dictionary of Dates, p. 237), states that Mr. 

 Thomas Kent " discovered* the virtues of Mimosa bark extract," and 

 received as a reward 10,000 acres of the richest land he could find in 

 Tasmania, 1829. 



See also a paper " On the Export and Consumption of Wattle Bark, and 

 the process of Tanning," by James Mitchell (Proc. R.S. Van Diemen's Land, 

 1851). The subject of extracts is here dealt with. 



The preparation of extracts causes an immense saving in freight, but an 

 extract is chiefly valuable in that it enables us to utilise everything. The 

 following is an account of a process as carried on in South Australia at the 

 present time, and is suggestive : "Messrs. Barrow and Haycroft have estab- 

 lished at Echunga a manufactory of tannage, which, from the methods 

 employed, is almost pharmaceutical. About 10,000 tons of wattle bark are 

 sent annually from South Australia alone, and it is calculated that the waste 

 in stripping is about four times this amount. The new factory converts the 

 branches, too small to pay for stripping, into a strong fluid extract called 

 tannage, which contains water GO per cent., and soluble tannin 38*2 per 

 cent, according to an analysis by Mr. Gr. H. Hodgson of samples from the 

 first 80 tons recently shipped to England. The wattle ' trash' yields 12 to 

 16 percent, of tannage. Two men can often cut and load 5 tons, and the 

 waggons can bring in two loads a day, equal to 5 or 6 tons ; and at the price 

 (1 a ton) which the firnTis paying for thinnings and tops and branches, so 

 much is offering that the patentees are obliged to distribute their order. 

 The trash is tied up in large bundles and carted into the factory. It is 

 there weighed, close beside the machine which cuts it up into * chaff.' This 

 machine is very much like an ordinary steam-plane, the chisels revolving at a high 

 speed, and cutting through 2^-inch saplings quite readily. The chips are 

 shovelled into large wooden hoppers, into which steam is introduced from a 

 large Cornish boiler. There are three steam-heated vats, and the liquor is 

 transferred from one to the other, pumped into elevated tanks, and thence 

 allowed to flow from a tap on to steam-heated evaporating pans, about 30 or 

 40 feet in length. The evaporation is so rapid that in traversing the pans 

 from the one end to the other the liquid is converted into a thick, tenacious, 

 treacly extract. At the end of the pans it flows into a cistern, and thence by 

 a kind of treacle-gate into the casks, each of which will hold about 10 cwt. 

 All that now remains to be done is paste on a label, put in a bung, weigh 

 the cask, and send it off to market. In the process of evaporation a certain 

 portion of the tannic acid is destroyed. The plant can be easily moved from 



* This is doubtful. Wattle-bark extract is several times alluded to as an ordinary 

 article of commerce in P. Cunningham's "Two years in New South Wales," published 

 in 1827. 



