184 PLANT AND ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 



It is also used in adulteration of beeswax. Cerosin, 1 a wax 

 from sugar-cane, is said to melt at 82 C. It has been pro- 

 posed, on account of its high melting-point, to use it in the 

 manufacture of candles. Five hundred plants can furnish, 

 it is claimed, one kilogram of wax. 



The bark of Fouquieria splendens^ or the ocotilla tree of 

 Mexico, also yields a wax. The native Indians use this stem 

 for illuminating purposes; it burns with a red, smoky flame, 

 and is called the candle tree. 



The vegetable waxes are mixtures of resinous substances 

 and the higher fatty acids, and differ from the fixed oils in 

 containing, in place of glycerin, cetyl and myricyl alcohols; 

 properly they contain ethers of higher alcohols of the ethylic 

 series and free acids. The wax obtained from the Graminea, 

 or grasses, to which class sugar-cane belongs, has been studied 

 by Konig. 3 He found that it contained no glycerine but chlo- 

 resterin, cerotic, palmitic, and oleic acids. 



The importation of vegetable and mineral wax 4 for 1884 was 

 617,992 pounds ($69,026); 1885, 1,056,438 pounds ($123,976). 



The oils of vegetable origin used in commerce 5 are usually 

 derived from grains; a few only are extracted from the fleshy 

 parts of fruits. The oil is found in the form of minute drops 

 in the rinds of fruits ; the orange contains four different oils, 

 and in many seeds the place of starch is supplied by oil, and 

 serves the future seedling for nutrition. The oil is usually ob- 

 tained on a large scale by pressure ; however, oils are soluble in 

 petroleum-ether, and may be extracted by it. In France, 6 the 

 cultivation of oil-yielding plants occupied 445,000 hectares, the 

 product of which represented a value of 105,000,000 francs. 

 Olive oil 7 is obtained from several species of the olive tree. 



1 Matieres Premieres Organiques. Par Pennetier, p. 771. Annales de 

 Chimie et de Physique, Ixxv, 218. Annal d. Chem. und Pharm., xxxvii, 170, 

 1841. Ibid., (new series), xiii, 451. 



2 Proc. A. A. A. S., vol. xxxiii. Amer. Jour. Phar., February, 1885. The 

 analysis of this plant is among the first published accounts of plants treated 

 by Dragendorffs scheme in this country. 



3 Landw. Versuchsstat, xiii, 241. 



4 Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department, 1885. 



5 LOG. cit., Pennetier, p. 706. 



6 Ibid., p. 709. 7 Ibid., p. 709. 



