01- THE COCOANUT DURING GERMINATION 339 



a " butter" is made from this oil which has the merit of enduring 

 hot climates without becoming rancid. This i)roduct has been 

 recommended for military and naval uses.* 



Among the prominent commercial products is the cocoa-butter 

 made in Mannheim, Germany, f Konig ;}: found this product to 

 have the following percentage composition : 



Nitrogenous 

 Water. Solids. Organic Matter. Inorganic Matter. Fat. Fatty Acid. Substance. 



0.15 9985 99.848 0.002 99.848 trace. trace. 



It has been stated that cocoa-butter is not very easily digested 

 and that it does not agree with sick people. § The recent re- 

 searches of Bourot and Jean, || however, show that a specially 

 prepared cocoa-butter melting at 3 1° C. and containing only a trace 

 of free fatty acid, is quite as easily and completely digested as 

 ordinary butter.TJ 



We have already alluded to some of the commercial uses to 

 which cocoa-fat is put. Soaps made from it combine with or hold 

 an unusual amount of water while still retaining special hardness, 

 one pound of the oil yielding three pounds of soap.** It is thus 

 well adapted for the preparation of toilet soaps. The soaps made 

 from cocoa-oil are characterized by great solubility in salt solution 

 and can be precipitated from such fluid only by the addition of a 

 very large excess of salt. The so-called "marine" or "salt water 

 soap" has the property of dissolving as well in salt water as in 

 fresh water and is made of cocoa-oil and soda. ft 



*Rusby: Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences, 3 : 164. 1901. 



■j-See Leffman and Beam : Select Methods in Food Analysis, 182. 1901. 



+ Konig : Menschlichen Nahrungs- undGenussmittel, etc., 2 : 309. 1893. See also 

 Schaedler, Technologic der Fette und Oele des Pflanzen- und Thierrcichs, 1340. 1892. 



g Liebreich : Encyklopaedie der Therapie, i : 744. 1896. 



II Bourot und Jean : Jahresbericht uber die Fortschritte der Their-Cheniie, 26 : 

 58. 1896. See also V. Knieriem, Chemisches Centralblatt, 2 : 672. 1898. 



^ "Cocoanut cream," a dietary product much used in the tropics, is made by grat- 

 ing the endosperm and squeezing through cloth the fluid from the finely divided 

 material. In a warm climate the resultant mixture contains much oil and is a very 

 delicious accessory food. Besides the oil, the " cream " contains chietly carbohydrate 

 and proteid. See page 332 for references to similar fluid obtained from the endosperm 

 by pressure in our own experiments. 



** Ebermayer : Physiologische Chemie der Pflanzen, 344. 1882. See also Joss, 



Pharmaceutisches Centralblatt, 449. 1834. 



ft See Schaedler, Technologic der Fette und Oele des Pflanzen- und Therreichs, 

 1178-1188, 1892, where may be found the results for percentage composition of the 

 sodium soap, given at the bottom of the next page : 



