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PALM OIL AND SHEA-BUTTER. 



By J. W. Sherriff.* 



I. PALM OIL.t 



The following is the method of preparation of palm oil from 

 the fruit : — 



Commercial palm oil manufacture : The nut bunches are cut 

 down from the trees and put in a heap outside in the air, where 

 they are allowed to remain for four or five days, which causes the 

 joints of the nuts attaching them to the bunches to be weakened 

 by the process of decomposition, and allows them to be detached 

 by simply beating them against any substance; the nuts are then 

 gathered up and the husks (decayed sepals) that adhere to their 

 base removed, either by the hand or by rubbing them together, 

 and separated by throwing them in the air and allowing a strong 

 breeze to blow them away. The nuts are now put into iron or 

 earthenware pots and boiled until they become a pulpy mass ; when 

 this has been accomplished, the mass is allowed to cool by being 

 emptied out into a canoe or hollowed-out tree trunk, which is 

 always kept alongside the place of manufacture ; it is now covered 

 over and allowed to remain all night thus. At daylight next 

 morning women pour water into the canoe over the pulpy mass, a 

 man or men get into the canoe with a stick in each hand to balance 

 and steady them while they walk up and down the canoe, thus 

 pounding the oil out of the pulpy mass under their feet. The oil 

 rises to the surface of the water and is skimmed off by the women 

 who pass it through a sieve to remove the remaining chaff into a 

 pot placed on the fire and heated to boiling point, and allowed to 

 continue in that state whilst the oil floats up as a bright red 

 substance; the water at this stage is being continually stirred and 

 the oil removed as it floats up until the whole is removed. The 

 oil is now put into a pot and heated to drive out any water it may 

 contain. In the Calabar district and in fact throughout the Pro- 

 tectorate there are only two classes of oil manufacture i.e. the one* 

 known to commerce as " hard" and the other " soft," the only dif- 

 ference in the manufacture being that in the case of the " hard" 

 oil the nuts are put straight away into the canoe in the first 

 instance without any preliminary boiling. The difference in the 

 price of the two oils is a pound sterling a ton, the " soft" oil of 

 course realizing the higher price. 



The extraction of the keriiel from the nut. 



All the oil having been extracted from the fleshy and pulpy 

 mass around the nut by the above process, the nuts are then laid 

 out in the sun for days to dry after which they are stored away in 

 heaps in the native houses for weeks, in some cases months, then 

 when thoroughly dry in the rainy or off season when the manufac- 

 ture of oil has ceased, native women can be seen sitting around in 

 their huts cracking these nuts one by one by the use of a rough 



* Communicated by His Excellency Sir J. A. Svvettenham, K.C.M.G., Governor, &c. 

 t Elseis guiueeiisis. 



