IV 



COCO-NUT PRODUCTS 195 



heat must be sufficient to discolour it, but smoked copra 

 is not subject to injury in this way. No effort is made 

 to get it drier than is necessary to make it s^l^ble. No 

 man who takes pride in his copra, or who sells it on its 

 quality, smokes it ; and the man who sells it as mere 

 copra, regardless of quality, naturally wants to sell as 

 much water as possible. 



While good copra cannot be made by smoking, it is 

 the best method of making poor copra. It is cheap, 

 simple, and practically independent of the weather. 

 From the smoke the copra absorbs creosote or similar 

 substances, which act as antiseptics, and tend to prevent 

 its decay. Copra made in part of unripe nuts is 

 rarely well dried and will not remain so. A variety of 

 fermentation takes place in it, making it mouldy and 

 rancid. As a result of these changes some of the 

 Philippine copra loses as much as one- eighth of its oil 

 before it is laid down in Marseilles, and if it were not 

 for the sterilizing substances taken up from the smoke 

 this loss would be much greater. Smoked copra is the 

 most cheaply sacked and shipped, because not injured 

 by breaking into small pieces. It is used for candles, 

 cheap soaps, etc. , but not for food products nor the finer 

 toilet articles. The larger part of the world's copra is 

 at present smoked. 



The most uniformly good copra is produced in 

 drying houses. This method of preparing it is in 

 comparatively recent use, but the product which may 

 be grouped as kiln-dried is bound in the near future 

 to increase rapidly in amount, and may be expected 

 ultimately to become the standard. Kiln-dried copra 

 is at present marketed chiefly from Trinidad, the South 

 Seas, and Ceylon. Driers built on models developed for 

 other products can be and are used for copra. Beside 

 these, a variety of houses have been designed especially 

 for this use. Any clean method of heating the house is 

 effective. But the coco-nut husks must in most places 

 serve as fuel, and these produce so much soot that they 

 are not suitable for hot-water or steam heating. 



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