Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/820

Rh 760 L E O L E Cerium Oleander. and fringed petal-like scales. The hairy anthers adhere to the thickened stigma. The fruit or seed-vessel consists of two long pods, which, bursting along one edge, liberate a number of seeds, each of which is provided with a tuft of silky hairs like thistle down at the upper end. The genus belongs to the family of Apo- cynacese, a family that, as is usual where the juice has a milky appear ance, is marked by its poisonous pro perties. Cases are recorded by Lind- ley of children poisoned by the flowers. The same author also narrates how in the course of the Peninsular War some French soldiers died in consequence of employing skewers made from freshly -cut twigs of oleander for roasting their meat. The oleander was known to the Greeks under three names, viz., rhododendron, nerion, and rhododaphne, and is well described by Pliny (xvi. 20), who mentions its rose -like flowers and poisonous qualities, at the same time stating that it was considered serviceable as a remedy against snake -bite. The modern Greeks still know the plant as po8oSd&amp;lt;f&amp;gt;vr), although in a figure in the Rinuccini MSS. of Dioscorides a plant is represented under this name, which, however, has rather the appearance of a willow herb, Epilobium. The oleander has long been cultivated in greenhouses in England, being, as Gerard says, &quot;a small shrub of a gallant she we&quot;; and of late numerous varieties, differing in the colour of their flowers and in the mutation of their stamens into petals so as to form double flowers, have been introduced. OLEARIUS, ADAM, a German traveller whose true name was Oelschlager, was born at Aschersleben near Magdeburg in 1600, and died at Gottorp 22d February 1671. After studying at Leipsic he became librarian and court mathematician to Duke Frederick III. of Holstein- Gottorp, and in 1633 he was appointed secretary to the ambassadors Philip Crusius and Otto Briiggemann or Brugman sent by the duke to Muscovy and Persia in the hope of making arrangements by which his newly-founded city of Freclerikstad should become the terminus of an overland silk-trade. It is by his admirable narrative of this legation (Beschreibung der moskoivitischen und per- sischen Seise, Schleswig, 1647, and afterwards in several enlarged editions) that Olearius is best known, though he also published a history of Holstein, and a translation of the Gulistan (Persianisches Rosenthal, Schleswig, 1654), to which was appended a translation of the fables of Lok- man. A French version of the Beschreibung was published by Wicquefort (1679), and an English version (1662, 2d ed. 1669) by John Davies of Kidwelly. The embassy to which Olearius was attached made two different journeys. The first (22d October 1633 to 6th April 1635) was by Hamburg, Liibeck, Riga, Dorpat (five months stay), Revel, Narva, Ladoga, and Novgorod to Moscow, and back again by a somewhat different route. The second (22d October 1635 to 1st August 1639) was by a similar route to Moscow, thence to the Volga, down the river to Astrakhan, across the Caspian to Nizovaya, and so on, by Shemakha, Ardebil, Sultanieh, Kaswin, &c. , to Ispahan, and then back again by Resht and Lenkoran to Astrakhan, Kazan, Moscow, &c. Paul Flem ing the poet and Mandelslo, whose travels to the East Indies are usually published with those of Olearius, accompanied the embassy. OLEO- MARGARINE. The process by which the French chemist Mege-Mouries sought to convert ordinary animal fat into butter has already been described under BUTTER (vol. iv. p. 592). The following account of the mode of manufacture as carried on by the &quot; Commercial Manufacturing Company &quot; in New York is abridged from a report by Mr Victor Drummond, secretary to the British Embassy in Washington, in 1880. Fresh fat from recently killed cattle is soaked in tepid water for one hour, then thoroughly washed with cold water, and, after having been soaked in cold water, assorted, the pieces less rich in &quot;oil &quot; being rejected and put aside for the manufacture of tallow. The fat thus selected is hashed up (almost minced) by machinery and melted down in water-jacketed caldrons, the water being heated by means of steam, so that the fat never becomes hotter than 124 Fahr. Through the action of this heat the fat divides into three parts, namely, shreds of membrane below, a scum of an emulsion of fat and water above, and clear oil between the two. The oil is drawn off and kept for thirty to thirty -six hours at a temperature of 85 Fahr., when a portion of the stearin and palmitin crystallizes out, while the more easily fusible components remain as a mother liquor, which is then squeezed out by hydraulic pressure. This oil, which on cool ing freezes into a semi-solid fat, constitutes oleo-margarine, and is recommended as an excellent substitute for melted butter. Of the oil considerable quantities are worked lip into imitation butter. For this purpose it is violently churned up with milk for about twenty minutes, a little arnotto being added to produce a yellow colour. The emulsion is run direct on a mass of pounded ice to cause it to solidify without crystallization. After having been again churned up with fresh milk, it is kneaded to remove the excess of water, salted (in short, manipulated as genuine churned butter is), and sent out into the market. The report includes a comparative analysis of real and of the Commercial Company s imitation butter, of which the following is a somewhat condensed copy : Real Butter. Imitation. 1. Glycerides of non-volatile fatty acids 51 4 56 3 2. Glycerides of butyric and other vola tile acids 7 4 1 S ( Caseine 2 P 6 3. Salt 51 51 (Water 23 8 24 9 Oleo-margarine, that is, ordinary fat minus part of the palmitin and stearin is necessarily somewhat richer in those components (2) which are characteristically pre dominant in butter, but still falls far short of what real butter naturally contains. The physiological action of these butter -glycerides, as we may call them, has never been made out possibly they may account to some extent for butter being more easily digestible than or dinary fat. Hehner and Angell have the merit of being the first to work out an easy and straightforward method for de tecting (considerable) admixtures of ordinary animal fat, and consequently also of such things as oleo-margarine, with real butter. It consists in determining the percentage of insoluble and non- volatile acids contained in the pre viously dehydrated and filtered article. By their modus operandi all ordinary animal fats yield close upon 95 per cent., while genuine butter yields only 86 &quot;5 to 87 5, at most 89 per cent., of fixed fatty acids. Easier and more decisive is the method of Reichert, who saponifies 2 5 grammes of the dry filtered article with 1 gramme of caustic potash dissolved in alcohol, expels the alcohol, decomposes the soap, after addition of 50 cubic centimetres of water, with 20 c.c. of dilute sulphuric acid (1 vol. of vitriol, 10 vol. of water), and distils off (exactly) 50 c.c., to determine therein the volatile acids by ascertaining the volume of a dilute standard solution of caustic alkali which is required to neutralize them. Real butter (per 2 &quot;5 grammes) yields 12 to 13 milligrammes, ordinary fats only 1 S to 2 7, of volatile acids, calculated as butyric, C 4 H 8 O 2. OLERON, an island lying off the west coast of France, opposite the mouths of the Charente and Seudre, and in cluded in the department of the Charente-Inferieure, has an area of 59 square miles. It is about 18 miles in length from north-west to south-east, and 7 in extreme breadth ; the width of the strait separating it from the mainland