U. S. Agar-Agar

A humble Japanese mountaineer one chill evening long ago was sitting close to his stove when there came a knock on the worn brown door of his hut. Opening, he beheld standing before him his Emperor, the Son of Heaven, shivering with a blue-nosed retinue. The Emperor was lost in the mountains. No food had been in the royal stomach for some time. So honored was the mountaineer by the visit, so solicitous was he for his Emperor's health that he set out an unusually large dish of his best seaweed jelly. When the meal was over the humble man, in deference to deity, threw away what the Son of Heaven could not eat. When the Emperor departed next morning, the mountaineer, thrifty, went after his lost delicacy. It had been frostbitten during the night. As the morning sun warmed it, the jelly disintegrated. Water separated from it into a little pool leaving behind a light, glistening mass like delicate tissue-paper flowers. The mountaineer, who was a bit of a scientist, heated the residue in water, saw it resume its normal form, laid the foundations for the great agar-agar industry of Japan. The fundamental process has not changed since the mountaineer's discovery.

Last week, George Ross Robertson, professor of chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, reported to the American Chemical Society that California financiers and scientists are developing the ancient Japanese industry, have built in California the only agar plant in the world outside of the Orient. Several years ago Japanese fishermen discovered some agar-bearing sea moss on the Los Angeles Harbor breakwater. Realizing that nostalgic Orientals in the U. S. love bird's-nest soup and knowing that agar-agar is an ingredient, they built a small factory, which Occidentals have taken over, moved, modernized.

The source of U. S. agar is a dark red alga familiar along the beaches of southern California. The alga grows generally in turbulent waters, must be picked by hand. Engineers are at present at work on a mowing machine which will stand rough seas, make production cheaper. Often the alga grows in water 60 ft. deep where only experienced divers can gather it. The factory has to pay $180 per ton to these seagoing harvest hands.

Agar is used chiefly as a culture medium in bacteriology because it keeps its form at higher temperatures than gelatin. Petroleum-agar, a familiar household intestinal lubricant, contains the substance in small quantities. It is useful in the making of glue, transparent silk, paper.

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