No. 3 (192I) MANUFACTURE OF FISH OIL AND GUANO 149 



fish and is technically known as body oil or " fish oil " as distin- 

 guished from blubber oils, head oils, and liver oils. Fish-oil from 

 its cheapness is often used as a cheap illuminant, either directly, 

 or indirectly when converted into gas as in the Mansfield oil gas 

 plant. The commoner sorts, usually brown or almost black, are 

 largely used, mainly by reason of their cheapness, as baths in 

 tempering steel and in batching jute, while the better sorts, brown 

 to yellow, especially when refined, are extensively used in leather 

 dressing, in making dubbin for leather goods, in the manufacture 

 of saddle and harness soap, and in arsenals for use in " browning " 

 rifle stocks, etc. These better qualities are also used, usually in 

 mixtures, for lubrication, and they are also used to some extent in 

 paints for out-of-door work. The stearine, or fish tallow deposited 

 from the oil, also has its uses in coarse lubricating work as in 

 greasing brick moulds and in smearing and caulking vessels and 

 boats, and in mixtures for waggon grease ; insecticidal soaps made 

 from fish-oil stearine, with or without rosin, are very valuable for 

 spraying purposes, and the refuse oil and stearine can be usefully 

 employed in manufacturing lamp black. In some countries this 

 body oil is considered to be therapeutically valuable ; for instance 

 in Cornwall the pilchard oil is considered by the fisher folk and 

 others as a standard remedy, and the use of the finer sorts of 

 sardine oil in wasting diseases is being examined in the Madras 

 Presidency. 



The sardine oils of the West Coast have been used or supplied 

 for practically every one of the above purposes ; large quantities 

 were supplied by Fisheries during the war for military and arsenal 

 purposes, for caulking and smearing country craft on Mesopo- 

 tamian rivers, in leather work, for the jute mills, for insecticidal 

 soap to planters and agriculturists, and to medical men. 



5. Fish-guano. — The name "guano" has been generally 

 employed to distinguish the residue (" scrap ') obtained by 

 drying the tissue and osseous material which is left after boiling 

 and pressing the fish for oil, from the "fish manure " obtained by 

 simply drying the whole fish on the beach (see below). This 

 "guano" which, when commercially dry, weighs about 20 per 

 cent of the whole fish, contains, when of ordinarily good quality, 

 about 8 per cent of nitrogen and 9 per cent of phosphoric acid, 

 but has occasionally yielded (from the Government yard at Tanur) 

 as much as 9*3 per cent of nitrogen. These figures, taken from 



