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Thus the process of decortication is effectively accomplished in a few minutes, instead of requiring, as it sometimes does in the retting process, days, and even weeks, and being at the best attended with uncertainty as to results, as is also the case when decortication is effected by machinery.
When flax has ripened, it is put through a process of decortication, which leaves only the textile fibre, and this was the work which poor old Kermelle thought that he could do without loss of dignity.
To determine the action of this tissue through its presence, take 100 grammes of wheat, wash it and remove the first coating by decortication; then immerse it for several hours in lukewarm water, and dry afterwards in an ordinary temperature.
This property is analogous to that of the radicules of roots, which take up the bodies most suitable for the nourishment of the plant. It proves, besides, that this membrane, like all those endowed with life, does not obey more the ordinary laws of permeability than those of chemical affinity, and this property can be turned to advantage in the preservation of grain in decortication and grinding.
Moreover, the retting process, which is simply steeping the cut plants in water, is a delicate operation, requiring constant watching, to say nothing of its serious inconvenience from a sanitary point of view, on account of the pestilential emanations from the retteries. Decortication by steam having been effected, the work of M. Favier ceases, and the process is carried forward by M. Fremy.
Last year, however, witnessed the solution of the question of decortication in the green state in a satisfactory manner by M.A. Favier's process, as reported by us at the time. This process consists in subjecting the plant to the action of steam for a period varying from 10 to 25 minutes, according to the length of time the plant had been cut.
These three envelopes are colorless, light, and spongy; their elementary composition is that of straw; they are easily removed besides with the aid of damp and friction. This property has given rise to an operation called decortication, the results of which we shall examine later on from an industrial point of view.
Their occupations included preparing rice with heavy blows of the pestle in wooden mortars, to perfect decortication; cleansing and winnowing maize, and all the manipulations necessary to draw from it a granulous substance which serves to compose that potage called "mtyelle" in the country; the harvesting of the sorgho, a kind of large millet, the ripening of which had just been solemnly celebrated at this time; the extraction of that fragrant oil from the "mpafon" drupes, kinds of olives, the essence of which forms a perfume sought for by the natives; spinning of the cotton, the fibers of which are twisted by means of a spindle a foot and a half long, to which the spinners impart a rapid rotation; the fabrication of bark stuffs with the mallet; the extraction from the tapioca roots, and the preparation of the earth for the different products of the country, cassava, flour that they make from the manioc beans, of which the pods, fifteen inches long, named "mositsanes," grow on trees twenty feet high; arachides intended to make oil, perennial peas of a bright blue, known under the name of "tchilobes," the flowers of which relieve the slightly insipid taste of the milk of sorgho; native coffee, sugar canes, the juice of which is reduced to a syrup; onions, Indian pears, sesamum, cucumbers, the seeds of which are roasted like chestnuts; the preparation of fermented drinks, the "malofori," made with bananas, the "pombe" and other liquors; the care of the domestic animals, of those cows that only allow themselves to be milked in the presence of their little one or of a stuffed calf; of those heifers of small race, with short horns, some of which have a hump; of those goats which, in the country where their flesh serves for food, are an important object of exchange, one might say current money like the slave; finally, the feeding of the birds, swine, sheep, oxen, and so forth.
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