PALM OIL is obtained, in Guinea and Guyana, by expressing, as also by boiling, the fruit of the avoira elais. It has an orange color, a smell of violets, a bland taste, is lighter than water, melts at 84° Fahr., becomes rancid and pale by ex posure to air, dissolves in boiling alcohol, and consists of 69 parts of oleiue, and 31 of stearine, in 100. It is employed chiefly for making yellow soap. It may be bleached by the action of either chlorine or oxygen gas, as also by that of light and heat.
Besides the foregoing source, much of the palm oil of commerce is obtained from the Cocos butyracea, and is a concrete, white, unctuous, substance, rendered fluid and by gentle heat. As a substitute for tallow, it is the greatest do mestic improvement of late years, and it is so abundant, both in Africa and Brazil, that it will, ere long, by cultivation, super sede tallow for candles and soap, and even coals, for gas-making.
The palm-tree, growing on the coast of Africa, furnishes, at the base or origin of its leaves, clusters of a yellow succulent fruit. Each of these bears some resem blance to a grape-shot. The bunches are of different sizes, and the fruit composing them of different shapes, as might be ex pected from their reciprocal pressure, al though naturally round, when not expos ed to it. The pulp of this fruit is soft,
and of a bright yellow color—it is from this that the oil is obtained. Within it lies inclosed a hard and thick-shelled stone, of a dark color, within which is contained a firm white kernel, of a pleas ant oily flavor. This kernel also aftbrds an oil, which is not yellow, but white and not fluid, but concrete even in Af frica.
The yellow palm-oil, is quite Rohl while in Africa, and that it is not until it has been exposed to the cold of our temper ate regions that it becomes solid—where as the oil of the kernel is always concrete, or nearly so. Both the white and the yellow oil are obtained by expression. The latter is procured in immense quan tities in Africa, where it is partly consum ed by the negroes along with their rice and pepper, or fried with their fish ; and partly exported to Europe, where its principal use is in the manufacture of soap and candles.