Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/628

 614 OLE BULL OLfiRON bottles of water, where they form roots in a few weeks and may then be transferred to pots of rich soil. This plant is exceedingly poison- ous in all its parts ; death has even followed the inadvertent use of the wood for meat skew- ers, and serious results from the sucking of the Double Oleander (Nerium oleander, fl. pi.). flowers by children ; an infusion of the leaves kills insects, and the bark poisons rats. In Bermuda it has become naturalized and is in common use as a hedge plant. The farmers there say that the oleander poisons the grass growing near the hedges, and that animals are killed by eating it; the fact probably is that the animals eat the fallen oleander leaves with the grass. OLE BULL. See BULL, OLE BOENEMANN. OLEFIAJVT GAS. See OAEBUEETTED HYDBOGEN. OLEIC ACID, an organic, monatomic acid, found in combination with glycerine in oils and fats, as oleine, or oleate of glycerine. It is obtained by the saponification of oleine, the most fluid constituent of the natural fats and fixed oils. Olive or almond oil is treated with potash, which sets free the glycerine, oleate of potash being formed in the soapy mixture. This soap is treated with tartaric acid, which combining with the potash forms tartrate of potash; and the separated fatty acid, after being washed, is heated for some hours in a water bath with half its weight of oxide of lead. The mixture is then shaken with twice its bulk of ether, which dissolves the oleate of lead and leaves the stearate. After standing some time the mixture is decanted and hydro- chloric acid added to it ; this unites with the lead and liberates the oleic acid, which dis- solves in the ether and rises to the surface of the water, from which it is removed and freed from ether by distillation. Large quantities of crude oleic acid are now obtained in the man- ufacture of stearine candles, by treating with dilute sulphuric acid the lime soap produced by the action of lime upon tallow. The fatty acids which are thus liberated, being washed with hot water, solidify on cooling into a mass, which when subjected to pressure yields a liquid rich in oleic acid, but containing con- siderable stearic acid. After exposure to cold this liquid deposits a quantity of solid matter, and the remaining liquid portion is sent to mar- ket under the names of oleic acid and red oil, which may be purified by the processes above described. Oleic acid crystallizes from its alcoholic solution in dazzling white needles, melting at 57 F. to a colorless oil, which at 39 solidifies to a hard, white, crystalline mass, ex- panding considerably at the same time. It8 specific gravity at 66 is 0*898. It vaporizes in a vacuum without decomposition ; is insol- uble in water, very soluble in alcohol, and dis- solves in all proportions in ether. It dissolves the solid fats, and is dissolved by bile, forming a soap. It oxidizes but slowly when solid, but when melted it rapidly absorbs oxygen and becomes strongly rancid. With glycerine it forms three glycerides, monoleine, dioleine, and trioleine. With ammonia and the metal- lic bases it forms salts called oleates, the oleate of lead being used in purifying the acids. The oleates of the alkalies are always formed in the manufacture of soap. OLEO-MARGARINE, a substance produced from tallow and resembling butter, so called by Mege- Mouriez, according to the idea that, as asserted by Ohevreul, butter contains margarine; but this opinion has been generally abandoned. Mege-Mouriez had observed that the milk of cows was not deprived of butter long after they were subjected to extremely scanty feeding; from which he concluded that the fat of the animal was converted into butter. Taking suet, which contains less oleine than butter, he ex- tracted a certain proportion of palmitine and stearine, until the proportion of oleine was suf- ficient to give it the consistence of butter. Fresh meat cut fine, a small portion of carbon- ate of soda, and sheep's stomachs, also cut fine, are put into a vessel with water and heated to 113 F. ; this causes the fat to separate from the cellular tissue, and being subjected to great pressure it separates into a firm stearine and palmitine, and an oil which on cooling has the consistence of butter. This substance (oleo-mar- garine), while liquid, is combined with about its own volume of a mixture of equal parts of milk and water. Some water, in which cows' udders containing milk glands have been di- gested, is added, with a little annotto for col- oring, and the mixture is then churned ; on cooling the fatty matter collects in a manner resembling that when cream is churned to but- ter. The artificial butter is washed with cold water and salted like natural butter. OLERON (anc. Uliarus an island of France, in the bay of Biscay, separated from the main- land by a strait which in its narrowest part is 1 m. wide, and lying opposite the mouth of the Charente, the N. W. point being in lat. 46 3' N. and Ion. 1 24' W. ; greatest length 18 m.,