The leader., 1905-11-04
EXTENSIVELY USED.
CocoANUT SHELLS FIGURE AS
GOOD ADULTERANT.
These and other Foreign Products
Enter Into Composition Of
Spices and other
Commodities.

All sorts of queer things crop up as
imports. Hundreds of thousands of
cocoanuts come here. Most people have
an idea that the meat of the nut is
worked up into cakes and pies. Pos
sibly it is. What becomes Of the
shells? The nut can stand about 80
days before it deteriorates, and when
cocoanut goes bad it has the flavor
Of an overripe egg. The importers
were never known 10 throw a nut
overheard, so the presumption is that
none is lost, says the Brooklyn Eagle.
One man who has been in the trade
denies that cocoanut shells are ground
up for coffee, but admits they are pos
sibly used to mix pepper. Several
hundred bags of crushed olive nuts
reached here lately from the Med
iterranean. There were previous ship
ments. These may form part of the
pepper that you will use few weeks
from this time.
''What is the use," said a man who
has been in the grain business for
nearly half century. 1T is only
prejudice, anyway. If you take the
cleanest wheat or -four, put it in a
bottle, seal it hermetically, and in
few days it will develop weevil.
The weevil is harmless outside the fact
that he is the greatest destroyer of
grain known. Magnified he looks like
tapir, with long snout. He doesn't
bite human like a mosquito or
flea, but he works woe to the men in
the grain trade"
The West Indian cockroach is said
to be about as destructive to cocoa
nuts as the weevil is to grain here.
Only man who has sojourned with
West Indian cockroaches on the San
Bias coast can properly appreciate
them. Some day an enterprising citi-
zen will organize packs of Bashi
Kouay ants to end the cocl1roaches.
Then it might be like the mongoose
and the rat. It would be all mon
goose, and nothing left. AS nothing
has ever been known to withstand the
onward march of the Bashi Kouay, it
is perhaps as well to bear the ills we
nave do " tly " I1AOoC VIC hUOW AOI
of. All the same, the West Indian
cockroach is said to be responsible for
much of the loss of cocoanuts. He is
reported to have habit of boring
into the eyes, or monkey face,' that
destroys the fruit. This is serious
proposition. The coacoanut is a
standard of values. The copra of the
South Sea islands is the dessicated
cocoanut of the East Indian trade, and
the main medium of commerce in the
South Pacific.
There is story, little short of ro-
nance, connected with the cocoanut
and Brooklyn man. The fiber, or
husk, of the nut, is converted into a
thousand uses. The first one to
handle it here was little Irishman in
Williamsburg. There was money in
1t and after turning the matter over in
his own mind, he saw that native la
Dor on the Malabar coast was cheaper
than in the East river. He collected
his few assets and settled down at
of the venture, and established
great East Ind6n importing house in
Manhattan. 1t is there still, in the
hands of his descendants under an
other name The Williamsburg man
who ventured his all acquired such an
ascendancy over the rajah of Travan-
core that his word was practically law.
He was allowed to coin his own
money, and when on his way home 4
here some years ago he died at
Cairo.
And then what becomes of the cocoa
nut shells, cocoa shells. crushed olive
nuts. and the thousand and one inn
ports that seem valueless to the aver
age man. They are all used in one
way or another. The shells of the
cocoa bean make good substitute for
ground cinnamon or cassia. There is
a use for everything in the modern
market A few years ago, in Argens
tina, the cattle, sheep and horses were
slaughtered for the hides and skins,
the carcasses being thrown into pits.
Baron Liebig revolutionized all that.
To-day there is not an ounce of waste
in the abbatoirs along the River Platte
any more than there is in the most adj
vanced plant in the United States.
Every scrap of hide is sent here to
be converted into glue stock. Some
of the imports on the manifests would
not look well in the newspaper col
umns, but they have great economic
value, and nothing is wasted to-day.