The seeds contain an abundance of oil, which might be substituted for olive oil; it is procured from them in great quantities, in Egypt, India, Kashmir, China, and Japan, where it is used both for cooking and burning. It will keep for many years and not acquire any rancid smell or taste, but in the course of a year or two becomes quite mild, so that when the warm taste of the seed, which is in the oil when first expressed, is worn off, it is used for all the purposes of salad oil. It possesses such qualities as fairly entitle it to introduction into Europe; and if divested of its mucilage, it might perhaps compete with oil of olives, at least for medicinal purposes, and could be raised in any quantity in the British Indian Presidencies. It is sufficiently free from smell to admit of being made the medium for extracting the perfume of the jasmine, the tuberose, narcissus, camomile, and of the yellow rose. The process is managed by adding one weight of flowers to three weights of oil in a bottle, which being corked is exposed to the rays of the sun for forty days, when the oil is supposed to be sufliciently impregnated for use. This oil, under the name of Gingilie oil, is used in India to adulterate oil of almonds.
The flour of the seed, after the oil is expressed, is used in making cakes, and the straw serves for fuel and manure.
The oil is much used in Mysore for dressing food, and as a common lamp oil. From 200 to 400 quarters under the name of Niger seed are imported annually into Liverpool for expressing oil.
Three varieties of Til are extensively cultivated throughout India, for the sake of the fine oil expressed from their seeds, the white seeded variety, the parti-colored, and the black. It is from the latter that the sesamum or gingelly oil of commerce is obtained. Sesamum seed contains about 45 per cent. of oil. Good samples of the oil were shown at the Great Exhibition from Vizianagram, Ganjain, Hyderabad, Tanjore, the district of Moorshedabad, and Gwalior. The gingelly seed is stated to be worth about £4 per ton in the North Circars.
An oil resembling that of sesamum is obtained from the seed of Guizotea oleifera and Abyssinica, a plant introduced from Abyssinia, and common in Bengal. The ram til, or valisaloo seeds, yield about 34 per cent, of oil. The oil is generally used for burning, and is worth locally about 10d. per gallon.
BLACK TIL (Verbesena sativa).—This is known as kutsela or kala til, in the Deccan. It is chiefly cultivated in Mysore and the western districts of Peninsular India, as well as in the Bombay presidency.
About Seringapatam, as soon as the millet crop has been reaped the field is ploughed four times, and the seed sown, a gallon per acre, during the month of July or August, after the first heavy rain. No manure or weeding is required, for the crop will grow on the worst soils. It is reaped in three months, being cut close to the ground, and stacked for a week. After exposure to the sun for two or three days, the seed is beaten out with a stick. The crop in Mysore rarely yields two bushels per acre, but about Poonah the produce is much larger. The seed is sometimes parched and made into sweetmeats, but is usually grown for its oil. This is used in cooking, but it is not so abundant in the seed, nor so good as that of the sesame. Bullocks will not eat the stems unless pressed by hunger.
About 5,000 maunds are exported annually from Calcutta. 3,703 bags were imported into Liverpool in 1851. The price per quarter of eight bushels, in January, 1853, was from 30s. to £2; of teel oil, in tins, weighing 60 to 100 pounds, £2 to £2 4s.
Bombay linseed was worth £2 11s. to £2 12s. the quarter of eight bushels, in January, 1853. Bengal ditto 2s. less. The imports into Liverpool were 68,468 bags and 54,834 pockets in 1851, and 14,490 bags and 33,700 pockets in 1852. About 9,000 bags of mustard seed and from 18,000 to 20,000 bags of rape seed are also imported thence. The price of the latter is about £2 the quarter.
NATIVE OIL MILLS.—The principal native oil mill of India, of which, however, there are some varieties, consists of a simple wooden mortar with revolving pestle. It is in common use in all Belgaum and Bangalore. Two oxen are harnessed to the geering, which depends from the extremity of the pestle,—a man sits on the top of the mortar, and throws in the seeds that may have got displaced. The mill grinds twice a day; a fresh man and team being employed on each occasion. When sesame oil is to be made, about seventy seers measure, or two and a half bushels of seeds are thrown in; to this ten seers, or two quarts and three-quarters of water, are gradually added; this on the continuance of the grinding, which lasts in all six hours, unites with the fibrous portion of the seeds, and forms a cake, which, when removed, leaves the oil clean and pure at the bottom of the mortar. From this it is taken out by a coco-nut shell cup, on the pestle being withdrawn. Other seed oils are described by Dr. Buchanan, as made almost entirely in the same way as the sesamum. The exceptions are the hamlu, or castor oil, obtained from either the small or large varieties of Ricinus. This, at Seringapatam, is first parched in pots, containing something more than a seer each. It is then beaten in a mortar, and formed into balls; of these from four to sixteen seers are put in an earthenware pot and boiled with an equal quantity of water, for the space of five hours; frequent care being taken to stir the mixture to prevent it from burning. The oil now floats on the surface, and is skimmed off pure. The oil mill made use of at Bombay, and to the northward, at Surat, Cambay, Kurrachee, &c., differs a little from that just described, in having a very strong wooden frame round the mouth of the mortar; on this the man who keeps the seeds in order sits. In Scinde a camel is employed to drive the mill instead of bullocks.