OIL PALM AND PALM KERNEL INDUSTRY 477 
local use is really quite a negligible quantity, and will no doubt almost 
die out when there are larger amounts of pomade and other skin 
emollients available for the natives to buy. 
9. EURopEaAN Macuinery For ExrTraction (PERICARPING).—Mr. 
E. W. J. Trevor, of 87, Maida Vale, claims two machines for detaching 
and removing the pericarp of palm fruit with abrading, and has 
devised also a means by which the fruit is held in place and has 
along in line, an endless band or chain. It is not stated, however, 
if this is successful. 
Another apparatus with knife-blades for decorticating the pericarp 
has been patented by Mr. H. Beckwith, of 2, Rumford Street, Liver- 
pool. It is called the depericarping machine. Dr. Hupfeld’s oil 
process is carried out at Agu (Togo). 
Haake, a Berlin firm, constructed a machine called the wet process. 
The fruit is heated with water and freed from the pulp in special 
machines. The pulp is allowed to drain, and then heated again and 
put under presses. The nuts are cracked in a large centrifugal 
machine, and the shell is separated by a drum-like sieve or by brine. 
With this process 100 lb. of fruit yield 15 Ib. of oil and 14 Ib. of kernels. 
Four or five tons of fruit can be treated daily by fifteen or twenty 
men. The natives only extract 7 per cent. of the pericarp oil. 
This oil contains over 30 per cent. of fatty acid and is only 
used for soaps 
The Government has set up kernel-cracking machines in various 
places in West Africa. 
10. European Nout-crackinc.—Several plants have been put up 
latterly to deal with the cracking of kernels by machinery. 
One of the first of such factories was started at Benin River, Warri 
province, where the shells after the nuts had been obtained from them 
were used for firing the engines of the machinery. Another factory 
exists at Abonnemma, Owerri province, and yet another was started 
at Yenagoa in 1914. The natives seem very willing to bring in 
the nuts to be cracked, especially where the population is not large 
enough to both make the oil and crack the kernels, as in the Brass 
and Degema districts. Brine is often used for separating the kernels 
from the shell. 
Some hand-machines have been brought out by Miller Brothers which 
crack the nuts, but both shell and kernels fall to the ground at the 
same time. A certain number of the kernels are broken in the process, 
but of recent years an improvement has been made in this respect. 
The cost of the hand-machine, amounting as it does to £30, is almost 
prohibitive for the native, unless a system of hire-purchase were to 
be adopted. Only a few of these machines (comparatively) have been 
sold to them. 
Yield of Oil and Kernels from Whole Fruit by Machinery.—It has 
