Читать книгу The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers - Various - Страница 198

The Bamboo is noted for its great economic importance, and serves a variety of useful purposes. The young shoots of some species are cut when tender and eaten like asparagus; the seeds also are sometimes used as food, and for making beer; some species exude a saccharine juice at the nodes which is of domestic value.

The hard stems are converted into bows, arrows, quivers, lance-shafts, masts of vessels, bed-posts, walking-sticks, poles of palanquins, rustic bridges, bee-hives, water-pipes, gutters, furniture, ladders, domestic utensils and agricultural implements. Split up finely they afford a most durable material for weaving into mats, baskets, window-blinds, ropes and even sails of boats. Perhaps the greatest use to which they are put is in building, for in India, China, Japan, Assam, Malay, and other countries of the East, houses are frequently constructed solely of this material.

Betel-nut (Areca Catechu), a palm cultivated in tropical Asia. The seed or nut resembles a nutmeg in size and in color. Pieces of this nut are rolled up with a little lime in leaves of Piper Betel, the Betel-pepper, and chewed by the natives. The pellet is hot, acrid, aromatic and astringent, tinges the saliva red, and stains the teeth. Its charcoal is used as toothpowder.

Cultivated extensively in the East Indies, where the consumption of leaves by chewing with the areca nut is enormous. Narcotic stimulant.

Cinchona, a genus of evergreen trees, includes thirty-six species, about a dozen of which are utilized. They are natives of the Andes, growing mostly between five thousand and eight thousand feet above the sea-level. It is the source of quinine, the most important drug in tropical medicine, and widely used throughout the world. Its cultivation is becoming quite extensive.

The bark introduced into Europe in 1639 by the Countess of Cinchon, whence the name. Now extensively cultivated in India, Japan, Ceylon and Jamaica.

Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum) is one of the most important cultivated shrubs. It is an annual and grows from two to four feet in height, with stalks branching extensively. At the bottom of the stalk the limbs are longest, and at the top they are light and short.

The flowers are white, or pale yellow, or cream-colored the first day. They darken and redden on the second day, and fall to the ground on the third or fourth day, leaving a tiny boll developed in the calyx. This boll develops and enlarges until maturity, when it is somewhat like a hen’s egg, both in size and shape. This boll is the house of the seed and lint—the products of commerce. In it are from three to five apartments or cells (often more than five in improved types), which hold the lint from its earliest formation until it is picked in the fall. The bolls of the cotton plant mature all the way from the last of August until frost attacks them. When matured, the fibrous wool, known as seed cotton, is gathered, ginned, and baled. When separated from the seed the lint becomes the cotton of commerce.

The chief commercial types of cotton are American upland, sea island, Egyptian, India, Brazilian and Peruvian. These differ in the length of the individual fibers (staple). The quality is indicated by the grading under such names as fine, good, good fair, fully fair, middling fair, good middling, middling, etc. Sea island cotton has the longest staple and is used for the finest qualities of yarn and fabrics. Egyptian cotton also has a long staple. Large amounts are imported into the United States.

Cotton is next to corn the most valuable farm crop of the United States. Nearly three-fourths of all the cotton produced annually in the world is grown in the south Atlantic and gulf states. The remainder comes mostly from India, Egypt, China, Brazil, and Asiatic Russia. A comparatively small percentage of the crop is sea island cotton from the coast of Georgia and from islands in the West Indies. The area of cotton production is spreading in the United States as well as in foreign countries.

Cotton fiber is spun into yarn and made into thread, muslin, calico and hundreds of other cotton or part cotton fabrics. Mercerized yarn is prepared by treatment with strong caustic alkali. Cotton linters are used in cheap yarns, cotton batting, mattresses, and the manufacture of celluloid and artificial silk.

Cotton seeds are subjected to heavy pressure in machines in order to extract the oil. The oil-cake is a valuable cattle food and the hulls are used for fuel or for paper making.

Cottonseed oil is used for table purposes, for packing sardines, for cooking, making soap, candles, etc.

The greatest centers of cotton manufacture are in England, New England, the Carolinas and Georgia. Germany, Russia, India and Japan are among the important manufacturing nations.

Modern cotton mills are of immense size. The bales are opened, the cotton cleaned, carded, and twisted into slivers, rovings, and finally into yarn. Raw cotton, cotton yarn and cotton fabrics are all important in trade. About half the crop of the United States is exported in bales to be manufactured in the mills of other countries.

England has an enormous foreign trade in cotton fabrics. The United States exports chiefly unbleached muslin, more of which goes to China than to any other country.

It is certain that cotton was in use in India three thousand years ago, and in Egypt more than two thousand years ago. It was well known to the ancient civilizations of Mexico, Peru, Central America and the West Indies. When the European voyagers, Columbus, Pizarro, and Cortez, visited for the first time these ancient civilizations, the manufacture of cotton was in a flourishing condition, and the quality and beauty of the cotton goods of a high order.

Flax (Linum usitatissimum) has been cultivated for centuries. Along the upright stalk, of eighteen to twenty inches high, small narrow leaves grow; the blossoms appear in July and August, and are light blue.

Flax is grown for fiber in Russia, Belgium, Italy, France, Holland, Ireland and Egypt. Little flax fiber is produced in the United States. Plants for fiber production are straight stemmed, while the varieties grown for seed have many branches. Flax seeds are produced in Russia, India, Argentina and the United States. Plants harvested for fiber are pulled up by the root in order to obtain the greatest possible length. The fiber is separated from the stalk of the plant by retting, a process of partial decay, breaking and scutching to remove the woody parts and hackling or combing. In the best grades of flax most of this work is done by hand.

Flax or linen fiber and linseed oil are the chief products of the plant. Tow is a by-product in making linen and flax yarns and fabrics.

Linseed oil is used in paints, varnishes, printer’s ink, oilcloth and linoleum. Linseed oil-cake is a valuable cattle food. Flax seeds find limited use in medicine.

Flax yarns are used in making rope, twine, bagging and coarse, unbleached fabrics. Linen yarns are made into products of the better grade, including fine linens, cambrics, laces, etc.

Linen is bleached by exposure to the sun and by treatment with a dilute solution of chloride of lime. Linen rags are the stock for the best qualities of paper.

The United States imports flax fiber mainly from Europe, as well as large quantities of linens, laces, etc. Some flax seeds are imported and large amounts of linseed oil-cake are sent to Europe.

Guava (Psidium Guayava), small trees of tropical America belonging to the Myrtle family. The fruits vary very much in size, shape and color, the most valued being the white guava, with pear-shaped, yellow or whitish fruits the size of a hen’s egg. The inferior red guava which is more apple-shaped, is also used in preparing guava-jelly and guava-cheese, which preserves, owing to the perishable character of the fruit, are the only forms in which the fruit is imported. The tree has been naturalized in the East, and is commonly grown from Mexico to Peru at date of Spanish discovery. Since widely diffused in East and West India Islands, India, and China. Recently established in Florida and California.

Hemp (Cannabis sativa) is cultivated in many countries. It is about three feet in height, has finger-like leaves and the fruit has the form of a little nut. The home of the hemp is the East Indies. The stalks are dried in the sun, then steeped in water or upon wet (moist) meadows, and again exposed to the sun, when the woody parts are stripped off. The remaining fibers are manufactured into cables, ropes, sail-cloth, linen and paper.

Other hemps of different botanical origin and having quite different qualities are called by such names as manila hemp, sisal hemp, tampico hemp, Mauritius hemp, sunn hemp, bowstring hemp, etc. Strictly speaking, none of these is true hemp.

It is cultivated in Russia, the warm countries of Asia, the shores of the Mediterranean, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois and California. Russia produces more hemp fiber than all the rest of the world. Russia and Italy are the largest exporters.

As with other cordage fibers of this character, the long, combed fibers are called line and the short strands, tow. The commercial fiber is longer, coarser and less strong than flax. It can not be bleached perfectly white, although used in so-called coarse linens. Russian, Italian and Kentucky, as applied to hemp, denote the country of origin. Italian hemp is the finest, Kentucky the strongest.

Hemp oil is pressed from the seeds. It is used in paints, varnishes and soap. The oil-cake is a cattle food.

Hop (Humulus lupulus), sometimes grows wild in hedges and bushes, and is also frequently cultivated. Its stalk, which leans to the right, is eighteen to twenty-four feet high; its petiolate leaves are heart-shaped, with three to five lobes. The blossoms of its stamens form panicles; the female cones stand either singly in the axils of the leaves or in clusters. In these cones a yellow, bitter resin, the hop-powder or lupulin, is secreted, which yields the wort for beer, and is also used by chemists. Hops are cultivated in almost all parts of Europe, especially in England, Germany and Austria. In the United States, California, Oregon, Washington, New York and Wisconsin produce the largest crops.

Hops are added to the malt, liquor, or wort before fermentation and give a bitter flavor to malt liquors. Hops are not exported on a large enough scale to be an important item in commerce.

Jute is an East Indian plant whose fibers are strong, coarse, dark in color and sometimes twelve feet long. The fibers are largely employed in the manufacture of coarse bagging and sacking called gunny cloth. Gunny bags, in which pepper, ginger, sugar, cotton, rice, gums, etc., are shipped are made of it. Jute is also largely mixed with silk, as it has a gloss that can scarcely be distinguished from silk when woven with it. Attempts have been made to manufacture paper out of jute, but it is difficult to bleach it white, and only a coarse kind of brown paper is obtained.

Licorice (Glycyrrhiza) is a plant having long, pliant, sweet roots, and generally creeping rootstocks; pinnate leaves of many leaflets, and terminating in an odd one; and whitish, violet-colored flowers in spikes, racemes, or heads. The roots of licorice depend for the valuable properties [168] on a substance called Glycyrrhizine, allied to sugar, yellow, transparent, uncrystallizable, soluble in both water and alcohol, and forming compounds both with acids and with bases. They are a well-known article of materia medica, and were used by the ancients as in modern times, being emollient, demulcent, very useful in catarrh and irritations of the mucous membrane. It is a native of the south of Europe and of many parts of Asia, as far as China. It is cultivated in many countries of Europe. The only American species grows in the plains of the Missouri.

Ramie is the bast fiber from a plant (Boehmeria nivea), commonly called China grass, or rhea, although fibers from other plants sometimes receive these names. It is usually strong and silky in appearance but difficult to clean and bleach.

It is used largely in China for weaving grass cloth, or Canton linen. The fiber is very difficult to “de-gum.” Many experiments have been made to find a satisfactory process. It is now used in making fabrics which resemble linen, laces, underwear, plushes, etc.

Raphia, a strong and useful fiber is obtained from the leaves of Raphia Ruffia, a palm cultivated in Madagascar, Mauritius, and neighboring islands, and of the Jupati palm, of Brazil. Madagascar raphia is the only important grade. A similar soft fiber used locally is produced in West Africa.

It is exported in considerable amounts from Madagascar and used by gardeners for tying plants; and also for making mats and basketry and in kindergartens.

Rattan is the stem of a species of climbing palm, natives of Asia, though some occur in Australia and in Africa. They have slender, reed-like but solid stems, seldom more than one or two inches in diameter, which grow to great lengths, clambering up among the branches of trees by means of the hooked prickles on the stalks of their leaves. The Indian and Malayan species are the source of the largely-imported rattan canes, used for the seats of chairs, and, in their native countries, for cables and a variety of other purposes.

Sisal (henequen or sisal hemp) is a hard, strong fiber from the leaves of a century plant (Agave rigida). It is cultivated in Yucatan and the Bahamas. Plantations of henequen, or maguey, have been established in Cuba, Hawaii, India, German and British East Africa and the Philippines. The home of the agave plants is Mexico and Central America and this part of the world produces most of these fibers.

On modern plantations machines have superseded the primitive hand methods of cleaning the fiber. Sisal is the chief product of Yucatan and its greatest export. The bulk of the production is used in the United States in making rope, twine and sacking. All of the other agave fibers are of less commercial importance than sisal or henequen.

The fiber of this species is especially valuable for ship cables, as it has been found to resist the action of sea-water better than most other materials.

Tobacco Plant (Nicotiana tabacum) is three to four feet in height; its leaves longish and lancet-shaped; its corolla pink; its fruit is a capsule, with many seeds. It is indigenous to America. Its leaves are either used for chewing, for smoking, or for snuff. It belongs to the poisonous plants, and contains no nutritious substance; its flavor and odor are disagreeable; nevertheless it furnishes much enjoyment to a large portion of mankind.

More tobacco is raised in the United States than in any other country and Kentucky raises more than any other state. India is the second largest producer. In Europe it is cultivated in Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany, Netherlands, France, Belgium and Turkey. Cuba, Porto Rico, Mexico, Central and South America, China, Java, Sumatra, Philippines, Ceylon, Syria and Cape Colony are important producers.

Commercial grades are named from the locality of production as Havana, Sumatra, Mexican, Turkish, Virginia, etc. Certain grades are appropriate for use as cigar wrappers and others for fillers and are so named in the trade.

The United States exports over half of the tobacco raised, chiefly to England in the form of leaf tobacco. Few cigars are exported, but cigarettes and plug tobacco go to the East Indies, China and Australia.