WASTE PRODUCTS: COTTON-SEED OIL. 105 



climates so that the stiffening point would be several degrees 

 lower. Lard was also prepared with this oil for the Israelites, 

 whose religion does not permit the use of any product of the hog. 

 The refined lard of to-day is made of refined packer's lard, pure 

 dressed-beef fat, and pure refined cotton-seed oil. The consistence 

 of the beef fat is overcome by the oil. Three fourths of the lard 

 in use to-day contains from ten to twenty-five per cent of the oil, 

 and nearly all of it is sold as oil-lard. It has been attacked by 

 producers of hog lard, but investigations have shown that the 

 new lard is quite as wholesome as the old. 



Table oil often bears the brand of olive oil when it is really 

 cotton-seed oil mixed with a small proportion of the olive. Some- 

 times the oil is taken to France and Italy and mixed there, but 

 more often the mixture is made in this country. So closely is 

 olive oil imitated, both as to taste and color, that only an expert 

 knows the difference. In the earlier days of making cotton-seed 

 oil the white oil brought a higher price than the yellow ; but to- 

 day the yellow oil is the more expensive. Cheaper processes of 

 manufacture have lowered the price and encouraged the use of 

 the yellow oil in making a substitute for butter. 



Cotton oil ranks next to sperm oil and above lard oil for illu- 

 minating purposes, and it may be burned in any lamp used for 

 either. Mixed with petroleum, it increases the freedom of burn- 

 ing ; but this requires a change in the wick. As a lubricating oil 

 cotton-seed is useless, because it is half way between the drying 

 and the non-drying. For the same reason it can not be used for 

 paints, for wood filling, or for leather dressing. It has some use 

 as a substitute for vaseline and similar products. The oil enters 

 into the production of laundry and fancy soaps and soaps for 

 woolen mills. The American sardines, properly known as young 

 shad and herring, are put up with this oil, and the use of it ex- 

 tends so far that nearly all the real sardines of Europe are now 

 treated in the same way. The oil forms an emulsion in medicine 

 and a substitute for cod-liver oil. On the market the crude oil 

 is known as either prime, or off quality, or cooking. There are 

 also the white summer, the yellow winter, and the white winter. 

 All these, except the crude, bring an average of about fifty cents 

 a gallon in the wholesale market. After the oil has left the seeds, 

 they become food for stock in the shape of oil cake, while the 

 ashes from the hulls make a fertilizer for root crops. 



The first attempt to extract oil from cotton seed was made in 

 Natchez, Miss., in 1834. The machinery of the mill was of the 

 most primitive kind, the pressure being given by wedges. Fail- 

 ure attended this effort, and also an effort in 1852 with improved 

 machinery. In 1855 cotton seed began to have a commercial 

 value. Small mills were established, and the prospects for devel- 



