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The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



a Props for the floor under the drying-trays which 

 move on rollers, 

 b A sort of wooden rail for the rollers to more on. 

 c Wooden stay to protect the tray from falling down, 

 d Drying trays, 



e Boarding covering the home-props. 

 House props. 



f 



The sketch ( A) shows a shed some 2 metres 

 high, roofed with corrugated iron, for sun-dry- 

 ing copra. It serves as a shelter for trays, about 

 '2 m m 2 5m in size, which stand near each 

 other and on rollers for facility of movement. 



The sketch B shows an arrangement of smaller 

 trays one over the other for use at night. 

 Both arrangements have turned out successful 

 in practice. The planning and up-keep of this 

 kind of drying-shed may be carried out without 

 great expense and the drying of the copra under 

 shelter of the roof is a great improvement on 

 the extremely primitive method of doing so 

 on the bare ground or on sand, as in this latter 

 case the absolutely requisite protection against 

 rain and dew cannot be provided for. 



The planter who would make the yield of his 

 copra independent of the weather and put a 

 uniformly good ware on the market must, how- 

 ever, make up his mind to construct sheds in 

 which the process of drying is done by artificial 

 heat. 



The principle of this species of drying-shed 

 consists of heating iron pipes and of having the 

 copra dried by placing iton trays over these pipes 

 in the sheds. The methods of generating the 

 heat are different. Subjoined I give a short 

 sketch of this arrangement. 



"Der Tropenpflanzer,*" on a request made 

 to the "German [Commercial and Planting 

 Company of the'South Sea Islands," received 

 the following information re drying-kilns: - - 



The Manufacture of drying-kilns is not known 

 to us. In our plantations in Samoa we at first used 

 California fruit-drying kilns for our copra which 

 besides being very costly were very combustible 

 so that several of them were totally destroyed by 

 fire. Again they did not produce a good white 



* 1904, JNo. 6. 



g Shelter which houses the trays (d) at night or during rain 

 (Sliding roof for covering as) security against rain when 

 trays are being housed, 

 k I, Corrugated iron roof, 

 m Portable trays for u-e (at night), 

 n The outer wall with a kind of portcullis-like doors, 

 o Position of the trays by day. 



copra as they had to be heated too much to 

 effect the drying at all and when the ventilation 

 was increased the process was too slow. After 

 numerous experiments and consultation with a 

 number of engineers we at last developed 

 for our purpose a primitive system of malt-kilns 

 such as an Engineer had previously used in the 

 interior of Russia and we achieved good results 

 therewith. These kilns are set up on our plan- 

 tations by ourselves. 



a 



9 



A Stone substructure. C Position of Pipes. 



B Fuel. D Chimney. 



Heat from a fire is sent through an iron pipe 

 which running backwards and forwards ends in 

 a chimney. These conducting pipes are sur- 

 rounded by masonry on which higher up are 

 wooden walls. The room is divided sometimes 

 into two, sometimes into three compartments 

 into which the trays are pushed with the copra 

 to be dried, 15 or 16 pieces one over the other. 



The whole contrivance is roofed over and 

 provided with means of ventilation to carry off 

 the moisture-saturated air. Ventilators forth© 

 introduction of air must be placed under the 

 pipes also to ensure a good circulation and there 

 must not be too much heat. We have discovered 

 that at a temperature of 40° to 45° C. in the 

 drying-room and with a good circulation of air 

 the copra is of the best white and dries well." 



Professor Preuss* describes as follows the latest 

 kind of drying sheds in Samoa which are good and 

 workable :— "The kilns consist of a stone sub- 



* " Der Tropenpflanzer" 1907 No. 1. 



