Cocoa-nut oil is a white fat, with the peculiar smell of the kernel; it is made by grinding or pounding the kernel of the cocoa-nut. After it has been boiled iu water for a short time, tire paste is submitted to great pressure, and a large quantity of milky juice is obtained; this is slowly boiled, and the oil separates and rises to the surface in considerable quantity, and is skimmed off. Twenty ordinary-sized nuts will yield as much as two quarts of oil. This oil is now very largely imported, and, treated in the same way as palm oil, forms a stearine, which greatly improves that of palm oil when mixed with it in proper proportions; neither does so well separately. and the consump tion of cocoa-nut oil has consequently very greatly increased. Most of it comes from Ceylon, where the tree is largely cultivated on purpose. The imports in 1870 were 9,930 tons; in 1872, 21,469 tons; and in 1875, 10,957 tons. By far tire greater.,proportion of this vast quantity is used by the candle manufacturers, and the remainder is making common soap, its disagreeable smell preventing it being employed for the better kinds.
Vegetable tallow, or kokum oil, is also used by the candle-makers; only small quan tities, however, are imported. It comes from Singapore; and is produced from the seed of Gareink purpurea, a species of the slime genus with the mangosteen. Another kind of vegetable tallow is made in China, from the seeds of Stillingia sebffera.
Carapa, camp, crab, or Andiroba oil, is very extensively made in British Guiana and the West Indies, but it is nearly all used, there, either as a pomade for preserving the hair, or as an unguent for rheumatism and neuralgic pains, for which purposes it is said to be useful. See CARAPA.
The Bassia oil is beginning to attract attention, and several importations have taken place from India, and some rather large quantities have reached Liverpool frpm Bombay, under the name of Muohwa oil. This oil is of a soft butter-like consistence, and yellow ish-green color, and is well adapted for soap-making, and for machinery grease. See