This weed is one of the best non-conductors of heat and finds use in thermotics, especially in the insulation of refrigerators and in refrigerating plants. It is also used between walls and floors to prevent the transmission of sound.
As the demand for this article is getting more active, large quantities are being gathered by farmers and fishermen along the shores of Prince Edward Island, dried, and prepared for shipment to the United States. (Text.)—Harper’s Weekly.
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UTILIZING SEED
“There isn’t one man in ten thousand who has the remotest idea of the vast number of uses to which the once despised cotton-seed is now being put,” said Captain B. J. Holmes, of New Orleans.
“From the clean seed are obtained linters and meats and hulls, the hulls making the best and most fattening feed for cattle that has yet been found. From the linters are gathered material for mattresses, felt wads, papers, rope, and a grade of underwear, and likewise cellulose, out of which gun-cotton is made. The meats furnish oil and meal, the oil after refining being now in almost universal use in the kitchens of this and other countries. Before refinement to the edible stage, the oil is known under many names, such as salad-oil, stearine, winter-oil and white-oil, oleomargarine being the product of stearine. The white-oil is the chief ingredient in compound lards. The original oil, also known as soap stock, has fatty acids used in the manufacture of soaps, roofing-tar, paints and glycerine, and from this comes the explosive nitroglycerine. I might also add that the meal, aside from its use as cattle provender, is transformed into bread, cake, crackers and even candy. Last of all come the doctors, who are saying that this wonderful seed is a boon to the sick, since from its oils an emulsion is prepared that has been known to be of value in tuberculosis and other ailments.”—Baltimore American.
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Utilizing Soap-suds—See [Sagacity Supplementing Science].
Utilizing Spider Threads—See [Nature Aiding Science].
Utilizing the Best We Have—See [Conservation of Remainders].