The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom / Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.

by P. L. Simmonds

Piney tallow is obtained from the fruit of the Vateria Indica, a large and quick-growing tree, abundant in Malabar and Canara. It is a white solid oil, fusible at a temperature of 97 degrees, and makes excellent candles, especially when saponified and distilled in the manner now adopted with palm oil, &c. It has one great advantage over coco-nut oil, that the candles made of it do not give out any suffocating acrid vapors when extinguished, as those made with the latter oil do.

An oil is produced from the inner shell of the cashew-nut (Anacardium occidentale var. indicum), in the East.

In Japan a kind of butter, called mijo, is obtained from a species of the Dolichos bean (Dolichos soya).

The kernel of the seeds of the tallow tree of China, Stillingia sebifera, an evergreen shrub, contains an oil, which, when expressed, consolidates through the cold to the consistence of tallow, and by boiling becomes as hard as bees' wax. The plant also yields a bland oil. A similar fatty product is obtained from a shrub in British Guiana, the Myristica (Virola) sebifera.

Oil is obtained in South America from the sand box tree (Hura crepitans), and from the Carapa guianensis.

A fatty oil is obtained in Demerara from the seeds of the butter tree, Pekea (?) Bassia butyrosa, and also from the Saouari (P. tuberculosa).

The fleshy seeds contained in the woody capsules of the Monkey pot (Lecythis Tabucajo), which derive their generic name from their similarity to an oil jar, are common in the West India Islands and South America, and yield a considerable quantity of oil.

The seeds of the plants of the cucumber family frequently supply a bland oil, which is used in the East as a lamp oil and for cooking. Among the vegetable oils imported into Ningpo, and other Chinese ports, from Shantong, Leatong, and Teisin, are oil of teuss, obtained from green and dried peas; black oil of the fruit of the tree kin (?) and oil from the pea of suchau.

The seeds of Spergula saliva, a large, smooth-seeded variety of the common cow spurrey, which is cultivated in Flanders as a pasture grass and green crop, afford, on expression, a good lamp oil.

A pale brownish yellow oil is obtained from the seeds of Carthamus tinctorius, in Bombay; the seeds contain about 28 per cent. of oil.