A  ocfober,Pi898rm  }     The  Cottonseed  Oil  Industry  in  Georgia.  499 
for  making  soap  equal  to  the  palm  soap."  Cotton-seed  cake  was 
then  considered  of  about  equal  value  with  flax-seed  cake. 
Prior  to  the  war  the  cotton  seeds  were  very  little  used  as  a  stock 
feed.  Some  farmers  sparingly  used  them  after  boiling.  They  were 
abundantly  applied  as  a  manure,  but  only  in  their  uncrushed  condi- 
tion. Browne,  in  his  "  Field  Book  of  Manures,"  says  :  "  They 
abound  in  a  mild  oil,  and  are  accounted  very  nutritious  after  the  oil 
is  expressed,  a  bushel  of  seeds  weighing  30  pounds,  and  yielding 
2y2  quarts  of  oil  and  I2J^  pounds  of  fine  meal.  The  oil  cake  is 
very  brittle,  and  breaks  down  much  more  readily  than  linseed  cake. 
The  taste  is  not  unpleasant,  and  it  is  stated  it  can  be  used  with 
success  in  fattening  stock." 
In  the  Patent  Office  Reports,  1855,  p.  234,  can  be  found  "  some 
chemical  researches  on  the  seed  of  the  cotton  plant,"  by  Prof.  Chas. 
T.  Jackson.  He  refers  to  a  patent  taken  out  by  D.  W.  Mesner  for 
separating  the  "  hulls  "  from  the  cotton-seed.  Analyses  are  given 
of  the  oil,  the  seed,  the  cake,  etc.  Professor  Jackson  employed 
ether  to  separate  the  fixed  oil,  and  it  was  found  that  100  pounds  of 
the  dried,  pulverized  seed  gave  40  per  cent,  of  pure,  fatty  oil.  The 
specific  gravity  of  the  oil  is  given  as  0-923,  which,  he  states,  is  the 
specific  gravity  of  pure  whale  oil.  He  recommended  its  use  for 
lubricating  machinery,  burning  in  lamps  and  for  making  soaps,  and 
suggested  its  use  as  a  substitute  for  olive  oil  and  use  as  a  salad  oil, 
it  having  no  disagreeable  odor  or  taste.  On  examining  the  cotton- 
seed oil  cake,  he  found  that  it  possessed  "  a  sweet  and  agreeable 
flavor,  and  was  much  more  pure  and  clean  than  linseed  oil  cake." 
One  hundred  grains  of  the  seed  leave  60  grains  of  the  oil  cake. 
This  cake  examined  for  sugar  was  found  to  contain  11  grains,  and 
for  gum  35  grains.  Iodine  gave  no  proof  of  any  starch  in  the 
cotton  seed,  nor  in  the  oil  cake. 
Since  the  war,  the  cotton-seed  oil  industry  of  the  South  has 
grown  to  immense  proportions.  The  number  of  mills  has  increased 
from  four  in  1867  to  over  300  at  the  present  day.  In  1872  the 
export  of  cotton  oil  only  amounted  to  4,900  barrels  ;  in  1896  about 
30,000  barrels,  and  the  present  product  amounts  to  about  28,000,- 
OOO  gallons  per  annum,  worth  about  30  cents  per  gallon,  causing 
the  consumption  of  about  800,000  tons  of  cotton  seed.  The  pro- 
duct goes  to  nearly  every  European  port,  to  Africa,  Australia,  India, 
the  South  American  Republics,  West  Indies  and  Canary  Islands 
