«76 
The tropical agriculturist. [October 
VEGETABLE " BUTTER." 
Some time ago the London Orocer cal ed attention 
to a new industry which has sprnng np in Germany, 
especially at Mannheim, for the manufacture of " butter" 
from vegetable sources. So far this industry has been 
successful, and now we hear that it is spreading into 
France, M. F. Jaen, writing in the Moniteur iScientu 
Jique, reeently stated that the manufacture of a vege- 
table butter from the oil obtained from coconuts is 
developing into a large bu'inirSf in France as we'd a" 
in Germany. D. Schiink's method is the one mosi 
favored by manufacturere. It dopends ripon the reat- 
ment of the coconut oils wiih alcohol and »nima' 
charcoal, which removes the volatile atjd fragrant falty 
acids of the aromatic oils, and maki- the uila jjerfeotly 
white. The product thus obfaintd is a p' rfectly white 
mass, of the oousisteucy of butter, k' a ol a sweet 
neutral, agreeable flavour melting it 25 d g. cent., and 
remarkably free from auy tendency to turn raiac d. 
Its analysis reveals the following oomp isition : Fut y 
matter, 99632 per cent.; mineral matier, 0 011 p^r 
cent.; water 0'357 per cent. Experiments con.lucrpd 
by various medical men on the lucigt- stibility oi' 
vegetable butter go to show that it exeroises o harmful 
influence upon the animal functions. — American Orocer. 
IRKIGATION IN EGYPT. 
1.— The Nile Baehage. 
* * * # 
In 1842 a French engineer, named Mongol Beg, 
suggested the building of barrages across the river, 
where it divides into the Roastta and Damietta 
branches, about 12 miles below Cairo, and of com- 
bining with these fortifications of considerable 
strength for the purpose of arresting the progress 
of any invader, and storing munitions of war. The 
idea exactly fell in with the military views of Mehemet 
Ali, who proposed to make the Nile bifurcation a 
Bort of military capital, and the works were sanc- 
tioned and started in 1843. The barrages consisted 
of two long masonry dams or bridges, the arches 
of which vmen closed were to hold the water up, 
or opened to permit the passage of floods. There 
were 61 of such arches in the Bosetta barrage and 
71 in the Damietta, with looks for navigation on each 
side of both ; the object being to keep the water at 
the same level in all seasons so as to entirely super- 
sede the necessity for lifting throughout the district 
below, and remove the difiiiculties of navigation when 
the Nile fell to its lowest. Mehemet Ali died in 1848, 
and in 1853 his successor, Abbaa Pasha, dismissed 
Mongel Beg and directed another engineer, Mazhar 
Beg, to finiah the work on Mongel Beg's plan. In 
1861 it was completed at a cost of £1,800,000, exclusive 
of forced labour, an additional sum, estimated at 
about 2J millions sterling having been spent on forti- 
fications, canal heads, &c. As was not uncommon 
in Egypt a very large percentage of these sums 
must have gone in the etcetera; nothing like 4 
millions was ever forthcoming in masonry. 
Cracks appeared almost as aoon as the work was 
finished: a part gave way when the gates were closed; 
the water worked under the foundation and exten- 
sivej settlements occurred. Repeated commissions of 
inquiry sat on it. In 1867 it was abandoned alto- 
gether, and finally pronounced a hopeless failure. 
In the next 15 years it was nothing but an impedi- 
ment to navigation, the passage of the locks being 
a difficult and expensive undertaking. Add to this 
many of the channels below had fallen out of use, 
others had been so neglected as to be capable of a 
very small proportion of their proper duty, had become 
in fact not so much canals, as natural channels 
in which the Nile rose and fell without any regu- 
lation whatever. When Sir Colin Bcott-Moncrieff 
and the staff of Anglo-Indian engineers, were called 
in to caiTy out the policy of Lord Dufl'erin, it was 
notorious the whole system of Egyptian irrigation 
had for yours been steadily going down liill from 
bad to worse. While giving every credit to these 
officers, there is, however, no necessity to depreciate 
their prcdccesaors, the French engineers. In the 
first place, the latter to a great extent no doubt 
had their hands tied by the Pashas, had often to 
suit their schemes to the political notions of the 
day. The country is hardly provided with means of 
communication, and instead of touring about and 
seeing matters for themselves, they had to direct 
Arab subordinates from Cairo. In the second, vrith 
all their scientific training, they had not the practical 
experience of the Anglo-Indian officers, who throu h- 
out their service had been accustomed to deal with 
very similar conditions, to adapt means to ends in 
every possible way, to be engineers, contractors, and 
revenue officers, and in India to deal with very simi ar 
Oriental people. What they so successfuly accom- 
plished in Egypt their brother officers have been 
doing equally well every year in this country. 
Such was ihe state of things in 1883, obviously 
not particularly hopeful. There was a proposal 
on foot for a system of irrigation by pu.nps to cost 
some £700,000 down, and X250,000 yearly for main- 
tenance. But before embarking on this Sir Scott- 
Moncrieff decided to give the old biiirages, neg- 
lected for 15 years, a trial. Some bits were patched 
up in 1884 and 1885, at a cost of £44,000 ; the water 
was kept up during the first low Nile season to 7 
feet, and the next year to nearly 10 feet, which ac- 
complished much. Fortune favoured the enterprise ; 
there was a bumper cotton crop, the cultivators and 
commercial community were delighted with the result, 
the merchants of Alexandria voted an address. In 
1885 the great Powers authorised the loan of a million 
sterling for special constructional works, and last 
year saw the chief engineering work of modern Egypt 
successfully completed, at the modest cost of about 
£420,000. 
The foundations of the barrages rested on fine river 
sand and Nile mud. When the gates were closed, 
the difference of level between the water of the Nile 
above and below the dam was very considerable ; 
during the low Nile of June 1885 this difference 
amounted to 10 feet, and the percolation by hydrostatic 
pressure under the foundations varied proportionately, 
as this difference increased or diminished. The prob- 
lem to be first solved was therefore to counteract 
this tendency, either by some form of construction 
that should provide greatly increased depth of foun- 
dations, or by broadening these out horizontally. In 
the case of existing foundations, the former was ob- 
viously impracticable, and any adequate additional 
vertical protection would have been of doubtful 
value, if not of prohibitive cost. The engineers, 
therefore, fell back on their Indian experience of 
similar work. For instance, in the case of the Okhla 
dam across the Jumna below Delhi, the river is a 
mass of loose rubble stone with absolutely no foun- 
dations, which holds up success! tilly 10 feet of water. 
There the construction is so broadened out that the 
weight of the river per lineal foot is about 40 times 
as great as the weight of water pressure against it. 
In the case of the Nile barrages, it was determined 
to make the weight of the submerged masonry bear 
a ratio of not less than 50 times this pressui-e. A 
solid bed of Portland cement, 4 feet thick, was put over 
the old flooring and under the arches. An up-strtam 
apron about 85 feet wide, and a heavy masonry 
pavement of dressed stone below were added, as also 
a row of sheet piling 16 feet deep along the edge of 
the apron. The difficulties of this construction were 
enormously increased by the springs constantly met 
with as the work proceeded, and by the necessity 
to hold up the water during the low Nile season 
every year. A few arches could only be dealt with 
at a time, enclosed by carefully constructed earthen 
coffer dams and assisted by continuous pumping. 
Preliminary operations were begun in March 1886, 
the work was taken up in real earnest in 1887 under 
Lieutenant-Colonel Western with Mr. A. Reid as 
the Resident Engineer, and the whole practically 
completed, both for the Bosetta and Damietta 
branches, with permanent heads for the Beherah, 
Menoufieh and Tewfiki canals last year. For the new 
regulators wrought iron gates have been provided, 
worked by travelling cranes, with Mr. Stoney's patent 
rollers, and an excellent tramway runs over the 
whole length of both bridges to the offices, work 
