ON THE CULTURE OF BENNE OR SESAMUM, ETC. 247 



given a detailed account of the culture of this oil plant in India, in the 

 " Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom," but the following 

 condensed particulars, taken from Drury's "Useful Plants of India" 

 may be appended with advantage to the foregoing statement. — Editor.] 



The oil known as the gingilic oil is expressed from the seeds of the 

 Sesamum Indicum, and is one of the most valuable of Indian vegetable 

 oils. It will keep for many years without becoming rancid either in 

 smell or taste ; after a time it becomes so mild as to be used as a sub- 

 stitute for sweet oil in salads. In Japan, where they have no butter, 

 they use the oil for frying fish and other things, also as a varnish, and 

 medicinally as a resolvant and emollient. Besides its economic uses, 

 the oil and preparations made from it are in use as medicines and cos- 

 metics among the Egyptians. The women consider there is nothing 

 so well calculated to cleanse the skin, and give it a bloom and lustre ; 

 to preserve the beauty of the hair, and to increase the quantity of milk 

 when they become mothers. The Egyptian physicians use it as a cure 

 in ophthalmia, and inflammatory humours of the eyes, but no confidence 

 can be placed in its curative virtues. Sesamum oil is insoluble in alcohol, 

 readily saponifies with the alkalies, and combines with the oxide of lead. 

 Dr. O'Shaughnessy says for all purposes of medicine and pharmacy it is, 

 when well prepared, equal to the best olive oil. The oil cake mixed 

 with honey and preserved citron, is esteemed an oriental luxury, and 

 the cake alone has been recommended as a food for bees. 



The plant is cultivated to a great extent in most parts of India, espe- 

 cially in the Peninsula. The following mode of preparing the oil was 

 given in the Jury reports of the Madras Exhibition of 1855 : 



" The method sometimes adopted is that of throwing the fresh seed 

 without any cleansing process into the common mill, and pressing it 

 in the usual way. The oil thus becomes mixed with a large portion of 

 the colouring matter of the epidermis of the seed, and is neither so 

 pleasant to the eye, nor so agreeable to the taste, as that obtained by 

 first repeatedly washing the seeds in cold water, or by boiling them for 

 * short time until the whole of the reddish-brown colouring matter is 

 removed, and the seeds have become perfectly white. They are then 

 dried in the sun, and the oil expressed as usual. This process yields 

 40 to 44 per cent, of a very pale straw-coloured sweet-smelling oil, an 

 excellent substitute for olive oil." 



There are two varieties of seed known in commerce, one white and 

 the other black. The plant bearing the white seeds is not so common 

 as the other one. The Kala-til, or black seed, must not be confounded 

 with that of the Guizotia oteifera, to which the same name is applied. 

 It is said that the fragrance is much weaker when the plant 

 has been sown in too moist a soil. The plant has a very general dis- 

 tribution, and the oil is procured and used in Egypt, China, Cashmere, 

 and the West Indies. In the Rajahmundry district, the seed is sown in 

 the month of March, after the rice crop, and is irrigated twice, once at 



