117 
may be described as ravison, and moreover proved to agree well 
in its constituents with a sample of ravison with which it was 
compared. 
ome information concerning ravison is contained in an 
article by Rothéa,* who remarks that in certain countries, such 
as Southern Russia and the Danubian Provinces, Charlock is 
specially harvested, and is even the object of an important 
culture, the seed arriving in France under the name of ravison. 
He adds that, in the exotic countries which produce it, ravison 
is generally harvested with very little care, and contains a great 
variety of foreign seeds. One may, therefore, say that in ravison 
as imported into France, Charlock is the crop-seed, and that the 
other components are accidentally present as weed-seeds. Rothéa 
proposes to apply the name ravison also to seed of Charlock 
gathered in France, where however it is very rarely harvested. 
Rothéa gives chemical analyses of ravison and of oil-cake 
obtained from the seed, refers to cases of intestinal irritation 
occurring among animals fed with the cake, and describes some 
table-mustard prepared from the seed as resembling that made 
from the seed of White Mustard, 
t is interesting to note that, though ravison is imported into 
Marseilles, etc., for the extraction of a commercial oil, the stipu- 
lation is sometimes made by crushers in Antwerp that oil-seed 
supplied to them shall be free of ravison. The explanation 
apparently depends on the particular use to which the oil is to 
be put.f Thus Bolton and Revis (loc. cit., p. 212) state that 
ravison-oil forms an adulterant of rape-oil, and that its uses 
are practically those of rape-oil, but that it is not so suitable for 
lubricating purposes. 
To return to linguistic matters, the fact that ravissén is a 
Genoese word, and is practically the same as the French name 
ravison, may possibly have some significance, Genoa being, 
perhaps, in some cases a port of trans-shipment for Black Sea 
applied to B. Rapa var. oleifera, DC., it may, perhaps, be used 
~ also as a commercial term for oil-seeds of more than one kind, 
in a similar way to “rape” in its extended sense. 
Assuming that some imported ravison may occasionally have 
been sown_as a crop in France, the local application of the word 
ravasson to Charlock (mentioned by Rolland, and quoted above) 
might be explained, since Charlock would presumably prove to 
be the predominant plant in the crop, ravasson, on this suppo- 
sition, being regarded as a variant of ravison. 
* Rothéa, La graine de moutarde des champs ou ravison, et les 
produits qui en dérivent. Bull. des Sciences Pharmacologiques, vol. 26 
(1919), pp. 16-20. References to two earlier papers by other authors 
dealing with the seed and cake of ravison are given. — - 
+ Or, perhaps, in some cases the stipulation referred to might depen 
on the intended use of the oil-cake as cattle-food. 
