WAX, VEGETABLE. This term has recently been applied to solidified oils. Mr. Edward Loarer discovered a mode of fabricating a, sub stance which he named vegetable wax, from its resemblance to that animal product, and he obtained a patent for it under Act vi. of 1856 of the Government of India. Ile manufactured about 200 tons, which brought various prices, but the latest selling price at Havre was about 143 per ton of 1000 kilogrammes or 2200 English lbs.
Candles can be prepared Of this material ; and the power of bleaching it is possessed in Europe. The vegetable wax is made from the common lamp oil (castor-oil) of the country, the plant producing which is grown throughout the length and breadth of the Indian ernpire, springing luxuriantly even on bare, rocky soils ; affording, therefore, exhaustless supplies of the raw material for the wax.
By one of Mr. Loarer's processes about 100 lbs. of oil were congealed in 8 hours ; only one ingredient (sulphuric acid) was used, and that only in very small quantity, 16 ounces sufficing for obtaining 100 lbs. of vegetable wax. This process is adinirably adapted to the country, and may be adopted by the ryots without any diffi culty.
Another process, inwhich both nitric and sul phuric acids are used, is the best adapted for manufacture on a large scale ; by this process, 400 lbs. of oil were congealed in a wooden trough in four days; and Mr. Loarer suggested an arrange ment and described an apparatus which would make this process of preparing vegetable wax on any scale very simple. The manufacture of vege table wax can be generally introduced into India, thus enabling the grower of castor and other similar oil-seeds to carry oil to market in a solid and consequently more portable state. At present
the carriage of fluid oils is not only difficult but costly.
This vegetable wax has the advantage of being easily stored, and transported from the interior on the rudest conveyance and in the simplest and cheapest form ; it can be loaded upon carts, on bullocks, or in any way best adapted to the habits of the people, and sufficiently protected from injury and from weather by the ordinary leaves and mats of the country, requiring neither casks, dubbers. nor boxes to convey it. It can further be solidified into any portions or shapes ; and on board ship can be stowed in any con venient corner, requiring no protection ag,ainst leakage or bilge water, and by its nature it can be packed so close that no danger from shifting of cargo or injury to the article from rubbing need be apprehended.
Illipoo oil produces with great facility a per fectly white substanc,e of the consistency of good tallow. Illipoo oil is with gre,at advantage mixed with castor oil for the manufacture of vegetable wax, and as illipoo oil has always fetched a very low price in the Madras Presidency, the discovery of this property renders it very valuable.
Margosa oil, the oil of species of Azadirachta and Melia, produces a vegetable wax as hard as any made from the best lamp oil, and of a light saffron colour. Margosa oil has always been sold in the Madras Presidency at a very low price, but its supply has never reached what it could attaiu should this oil become saleable. Margosa as well as illipoo oil, mixed with au equal quantity of cold-drawn castor oil, produces a hard vegetable wax of an agreeable roseate colour.