SAPONIFICATION. See OILS AND FATS, and SOAP-MAlaNG.
SA.70/7I/M is a vegetable principle contained in various plants, including the soponaria of/icinalis, or soap-wort, the polygala seaega, several varieties of lychnis, the fruit of the horse-chestnut, etc. It is readily extracted from the root of soap-wort by means of boiling alcohol, which, as it cools, deposits the saponine as an amorphous sediment. It derives its name from its behavior with water, in which it is soluble in all proportions, yielding an opalescent fluid which froths when shaken, like a solution of soap, if even part of saponine be present. Its solution, or an infusion of soap wort, is sometimes employed in place of a solution of an alkaline soap, for cleansing the finer varieties of wool from grease.
a natural order of exogenous plants, consisting of trees and shrubs, often abounding in milky juice. The leaves are leathery, entire, arid without stipules. The flowers are axillary; the calyx regular, persistent, generally with five divisions; the corolla monopetalous, hypogynous, deciduous, regular, its segments usually equal in number to those of the calyx, rarely twice or thrice as many. The stamens are inserted
on the corolla, fertile ones generally as ninny as the segments of the calyx, and generally with alternate sterile ones. There is,no disk. The ovary is sul;erior, with several cells, each cell with one ovule. The fruit is fleshy; the seeds nut-like, sometimes cohering; the testa bony and shining, with a very long, opaque, and softer sear on the inner face. —There are considerably more than 200 known species, natives of the tropics, and the remainder of subtropical countries. One of the most recently discovered species is also already one of the most important, isonandra guttg, which produces gutta pereha (q.v.).—The fruits of some are pleasant, as the sapodilla (q.v.), and other species of the genus achras, the STAR APPLE, and other species of ehrysophyllum (q.v ), different species of inimugops; intheimia malabarica and I. Maithat. various species of biennia, etc. The genus bassia (q.v.) contains species valuable for the oils which they yield. The seeds of tnimwropm dengi also yield oil abundantly.