288 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
quickly as possible after the milk is drawn. Sometimes, in 
winter, a little coloring may be used, and for this purpose as 
well also as for coloring the cheese, nothing has given so much 
satisfaction as annattoine, or the dry extract of annatto recently 
introduced. 
The modes of preparing annatto for commerce are various 
and intricate. M. Le Blond, a French chemist,"gives an ac¬ 
count of its manufacture as follows ; he says : 
The pods of the true Bixa Orellana being gathered, their 
seeds are taken out and bruised, and placed in a vat, which is 
called a steeper, when they are covered with water. Here the 
substance is left for several weeks or even months. It is then 
squeezed through sieves placed above the steeper, that the 
water containing the coloring matter in suspension may return 
to the vat. ♦ The residuum is preserved under the leaves of 
the banana or palm, till it becomes hot by fermentation, when 
it is again subjected to the same operation, and this treatment 
is continued till no more color remains. The precipitate is 
boiled in copper to a consistent paste; it is then suffered to 
cool, and is dried in the shade. The annatto of commerce, as 
is well known, is often largely adulterated, during the boiling 
process, with red ochre, powdered bricks, calcothar, farinaceous 
substances, chalk, sulphate of lime, turmeric, &c., while salt 
and oil are added as preservatives against a bug which is gen¬ 
erated in annatto, especially that which is adulterated with far¬ 
inaceous substances. 
Instead of this long process, which engenders disease by the 
putrefaction induced, and which affords an inferior product, 
M. Le Blond proposed simply to work the seeds until they are 
entirely deprived of their color, which lies wholly on the sur¬ 
face ; to precipitate the same by means of an acid, and to boil 
in the ordinary manner, or to drain in bags as is practised with 
indigo. This process, it is said, has never been successfully 
carried out on a large scale until now (1870), as no precipitate 
could be found that did not in one way or another injure the 
color. Small quantities were prepared according to Le Blond’s 
