ON MINERAL OILS AND THE MINJAK LANTOENG OP JAVA. 333 



The areca-nut fibre is worthy of notice, because of its capability of 

 being turned to many useful purposes, especially as it has a soft and cotton- 

 like feel, and is capable of being spun into twine. Moreover, immense 

 quantities of the areca-nut husks are now thrown away, and should this 

 fibre be found capable of being made into paper, or turned to other useful 

 purposes, of which no doubt is entertained, it may be collected in large 

 quantities, and at little cost. 



ON MINERAL OILS AND THE MINJAK LANTOENG OF JAVA. 



BY DR. BLEEKRODE.* 



At the commencement of the year 1861, the papers were filled with 

 marvellous accounts of springs and wells yielding immense quantities of 

 mineral oil in North America. In March of the same year, purified 

 mineral oils from America, limpid as water, could be obtained at the 

 establishment of Mr. James Madden, of London, at If. 50c. the litre. 



Mineral oils have, as yet, been little studied. Their chemical com- 

 position varies in the same degree as their origin, in the successive geo- 

 logical stages of the earth's crust. Mineral oils are not of the character 

 of tar, but they much resemble in their composition, the paraffin oils 

 prepared by Mr. James Young's system, by the slow distillation, at a low 

 temperature, of Boghead or Cannel coal. A specimen of mineral oil brought 

 from Banjermassen, in Java, scarcely differs from this. But this resemblance 

 ought not, however, to lead one to the hypothesis of attributing the origin 

 of mineral oils to the distillation of coal, bituminous schists, or lignites, 

 and certainly not to the opinion of American geologists, ascribing them 

 to the decomposition of animal substances in the Devonian and Silurian 

 epochs. Pure mineral oil may be completely distilled at temperatures 

 between 360 deg. and 400 deg. O, and it would, consequently, require a 

 depth of from 10 to 12 kilometres to attain this intensity of terrestrial 

 heat. 



The mineral oil of Kangoon, obtained from wells in the vicinity of the 

 river Irawaddy in the Burman Empire (Burmese naphtha, or Rangoon tar), 

 has become an article of regular importation to England, amounting in 

 1857 to 29,811 litres, and in 1858 to 17,118 litres. Mr. Warren De la Rue 

 and Dr. Hugo Mtiller have studied its chemical composition, and they have 

 described it as a mixture of hydrocarbons, without any combination of 

 oxygen. Rangoon oil contains 10 to 11 per cent, of paraffin ; it has a 

 density of 0.880 at a temperature of 40 deg., and then consists of a liquid 



* The Author, Professor at the Royal Academy at Delft, and one of the most dis- 

 tinguished scientific men in Holland, died at Delft on January 3 last. The present 

 article, communicated to the ' Repertoire de Chimie Appliquee,' was one of the last 

 published by him. 



