Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1904 — SOAP TREE OF ALGERIA. [ARTICLE]

SOAP TREE OF ALGERIA.

Steps Are Being Taken to Manufacture on a Large Scale. Consul-General Guenther, at Frank-fort-on-the-Maln, Germany, sends in a breezy letter to the Department of Commerce in which lie tells about the "soap tree” of Algeria, says the Washington correspondent of the New York Herald. There are soap plants and soap trees. First, there is the soapwort. which every Dutch and Belgian, Danish, German and Austrian housewife raises in her garden and uses as she would soap, the leaves yielding a profuse lather. Then there is the Leucocrinum montanura, a kind of lily, which -grows upon the slopes of the liocky Mountains, and which the Digger Indians used to catch trout by filling the waters of the pool in which the fish live full of the soapy lather of this root, thus making the trout ill and causing them to rise to the surface. Then there is the Lechuguilla (Agave heteracantba), a variety of century plant, the roots of which the Mexicans use for soap, and the amole (Ohlorogalum pomeridianum), a sort of lily used by the Mexicans of lower California for soap. But, according to Consul Guenther,' the soap tree differs from all these in the respect that it all but bears cake 3 of nice castile soap instead of fruit or berries. Heretofore all these plans, from soap tree to soap berry, have been used simply by seml-civilized folk In place of commercial soap, but now it appears the Algerian soap tree Is to be turned to commercial purposes. Consul Guenther says: “German papers report that steps are being taken In Algeria to manufacture natural soap on a large scale from a tree known as Sapindus utilis. This tree, which has long been known in Japan, China and India, bears a fruit of about the size of a horsechestnut, smooth and round. The color varies from a yellowish green to brown. The Inner part Is of a dark color and has an oily kernel. “The tree bears fruit In its sixth year and yields from fifty-five to 220 pounds of fruit, which can be easily harvested in the fall. By using water or alcohol the saponaceous ingredient of the fruit is extracted. The cost of production is said to be small, and the soap, on account of possessing no alkaline qualities, is superior to the ordinary soap of commerce.”