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 A PEEP AT THE TROPICS 247

use and price like that of linseed oil. Small quantities of this oil have been imported into the United States for seventy-five years. No one is making large commercial use of it at present, but it seems to be a remarkable waiting resource.

PALM OIL *—BOTH FOOD AND RAW MATERIAL—A SUGGESTIVE METEOR OF COMMERCE

The meteoric rise of the African palm-oil trade is one of the miracles of recent commerce. The oil palm widely scattered in the forests of western and central Africa produces a big fruit with an oily pulp surrounding a hard nut containing an oily kernel. For ages the African native has been boiling this fruit and skimming off the oil for butter fat.

About the beginning of this century some of this palm oil reached Europe. It attracted the attention of manufacturers, and Lord Leverhulme. English soap magnate, father of Sunlight Soap, sent scientific explorers to investigate the

gathered free from the soft outside husk. Only an extremely small percentage of the nuts spoil or turn rancid even after lying two years on the ground. The spoiled nuts float in water and may thus be easily separated from the sound ones. At thirty cents per one hundred pounds the laborer would receive one dollar and fifty cents for five hundred pounds, a day's work. The average oil content of the meat or kernel is sixty-five per cent. The kernel equals thirty per cent, of the weight of the nut. About 19.5 per cent, of the nut is therefore oil. In the Sunda Isles where kukui oil is an important article of export, experiments have shown that ninety per cent, of the oil is obtained by commercial methods through the use of presses. The oil recoverable by commercial methods would thus amount to 17.5 per cent, of the weight of the nuts. From one hundred pounds of nuts 17.5 pounds of oil would be obtained, or a value of one dollar and seventyfive cents at ten cents per pound.

"Kukui oil has been shipped from various islands of the Pacific to the United States for the past seventy-five years for use in making soap, paint, varnish, and artists' oil. The market price is the same as or slightly higher than that of linseed oil and varies with the price of the latter." (Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station. Honolulu. Hawaii. Bulletin. No. 39, issued February 8, 1913. The Extraction and Use of Kukui Oil, by E. V. Wilcox and Alice R. Thompson.)

® The palm is said to be second only to the grass family in the number of its species. When one considers its present productivity as resulting chiefly from unscientific chance, it opens interesting speculation as to what it might produce after a few decades of selection and breeding.