460 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL gouRNAL. [1 Dec., 1897. 
inward towards the centre by the leaves, and considerable difficulty is expe- 
rienced in dislodging the spadix from the parent tree, the enveloping base of 
the leaf having to be removed before the nuts are free. From pictorial 
evidence obtained from a dictionary (Ogilvie and Annandale) it would seem 
that the adult tree retains the old leaf bases and gives the palm a rough 
appearance, but in the earlier stages a more graceful picture of vegetation 
could hardly be imagined; probably the same beauty would last for fifteen or 
» twenty years. The following may be of interest:—'The kernels, with the 
exception of an insignificant quantity used for the manufacture of oil for 
domestic purposes, in Africa were formerly thrown away. Attention was 
first drawn to their utilisation in Liberia. Within the last fifteen years 
they have been more generally collected and employed. The shell being 
broken, the kernels are shipped to be pressed for oil, &c. Vast extension 
of the African trade hag arisen out of this new export. It has been 
estimated by competent authorities that from the 50,000 tons of palm oil 
shipped, there must be 10,000,000 bushels of kernels, equal to 223,000 tons 
in weight. The average yield from these kernels being about 30 per cent., 
if all were utilised, this would furnish 76,000 tons more of oil, worth, at the 
price of cocoanut oil (which it closely resembles), about £2,700,000. The oil 
cake is valued at £6 per ton. In Liberia, on a small scale, a bushel of kernels 
was found to yield two gallons of oil, but with good presses a very much larger 
yield than this is obtained. The palm kernels are quoted in London, 1877, at 
£12 10s. to £14 per ton. The size of the kernels varies from that of a hazel- 
nut to that of a small pigeon-egg. They are very hard, nearly inodorous, 
rather insipid to the taste, and extremely rich in fatty matter, possessing the 
consistency of butter, with the useful property of not readily turning rancid. 
The value of the kernels seems to be even greater than the value of the oil 
from the material of the surface. That shipped from the port of Lagos 
averages nearly £300,000, or double that of palm oil. It would be interesting 
to know how the natives of Africa rid the kernels of the enveloping shell.* 
The nuts vary in size, according to the position each individual one grows on 
the spadix, and it would appear from this that a sizer would be required before 
the nuts could be put through a nutcracker and the kernels secured. Judging 
from a distance, it is hard to know how the operation is carried on. Presumably 
labour is not of much value on the West Coast of Africa, and the vast hordes, 
which were at one time liable to slavery, are even now abjectly submissive to 
their kings or chiefs. 
Machinery to manipulate the nuts and preserve the kernels has probably 
been introduced, although no mention is made by any of the authorities that 
have been consulted by the writer.+ In avolume of the Zropical Agriculturist 
for 1888 and 1889, we are told that African palm-oil nuts are becoming quite 
plentiful in many districts in Ceylon, and the question wiil speedily arise as to 
how they are to be utilised, either for export as plucked or by having the oil 
locally expressed ; and that the British Consul at Loanda, in a recent report 
on the agriculture of the province of Angola, describes the method of 
* A paper by Mons. Max Astrie, M.G.S., translated by Major A. J. Boyd, was read at the 
last meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Brisbane in 
1895. The paper was entitled “‘ A Voyage to Kagnabak Island, Bissagos Archipelago, Portuguese 
Guinea, N.W. Africa.” The writer stated that the whole of Anhoumero Island is covered with 
palm-trees (not to be confounded with its congener in Africa, the date palm). The oil palm-tree 
of the Bissagos is a tree about 8 to 12 metres (25 to 38 feet) high, at the head of which bunches 
of spadices are produced, growing to the size of a man’s head. On each spadix are hundreds of 
small nuts covered with a fleshy red skin. The natives gather the nuts, and throw them into a 
vessel of boiling water. The skin throws off a eet) of oil of a brick-red colour. This is the 
palm oil. When the nuts have been deprived of their skin, they are set aside to be broken up 
with hammers by women and children, who extract from it a hard oleaginous kernel, well known 
in all the markets of Europe under the name of palm kernels.—Hd. Q..4.J. 
+ M. Olivier, Viscount of Sanderval, M.G.S. of Marseilles, invented a machine for breakin; 
the palm nuts and easily extracting the kernels. But the Bissago natives are so ignorant td 
brutalised that it has been found impossible to induce them to make use of this ingenious 
apparatus, which in one hour will perform an amount of work which would employ a man 
working with a hammer for fifteen days.—Ed. Q.4.J. 
