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Mr. Butler: What I am speaking of is for proof of the gentleman's asser- 

 tion, and I would like to have him produce the oil that he calls first rate, 

 when that produced by yourself is only second or third rate. 



Mr. Cooper: I presume that Mr. Dondero made those remarks, not from 

 the knowledge of the oil that I produced, but from the manner in which I 

 make it. There they allow a portion of the oil to run out without any 

 pressing, which they call virgin oil; they press it a little and call it second 

 pressing, and a little more the third pressing. I take out the first pressing 

 from cold presses, without any heat as described to a certain extent by Mr. 

 Dondero; I get a good deal more oil than he recommended in his essay, 

 and then I take the pomace from the press and put it back in the mill, 

 grind it exactly in the same way as described by Mr. Dondero, and pour, 

 not hot water, but boiling water, on it to liberate the balance of the oil, 

 to make what I call and style the second pressing, which is preferred by 

 some people. I weigh in every berry, and take all the precautions as 

 described by Mr. Dondero; these olives are put through a large fanning mill 

 so as to blow out every substance in the olives before they are dried, but I 

 dry them with artificial heat in twenty-four hours, the thermometer not 

 to exceed 120 degrees; then they are crushed and the oil is made right 

 away; there is no delay between the picking and the making of the oil. 

 The commercial value of this oil is perhaps a little fancy. In the first 

 place, the Lucca oil which was mentioned, put up by Crosse & Blackwell, 

 is very largely adulterated of late — probably now more than 75 per cent 

 adulterations, and 25 per cent of olive oil. The Barton & Guestier oil, put 

 up in France, and sold at the highest price as a French oil in San Fran- 

 cisco, is also largely adulterated. There is no question about it; it can be 

 tried by any person who has read what is laid down upon the wrapper of 

 every bottle I sell; it tells every housewife how she can detect whether it is 

 pure or not, but she must have a bottle of mine to try it with. My oil is 

 pure olive oil, and therefore an absolute test. Now, these olives are all 

 weighed as they are brought in from the pickers. There is a careful record 

 kept of that weight, and after it is made, drawn, filtered, and bottled, there 

 is a careful record kept of every bottle that goes out of the mill. I get a 

 little more than one pound of oil in the bottle, and as I stated in my treatise, 

 I found that the best results I had had at that time were 10.56 pounds of 

 olives to one bottle of oil. The difference between the percentage of olive 

 oil, as given by the different authorities, deviates, from the fact that you do 

 not know when these olives were weighed. The olive will lose 50 per cent 

 in weight between the time it is picked from the tree and its dried state 

 when crushed. In other words, the Mission olive will give 20 per cent of 

 oil, if weighed after dried; 10 per cent, if weighed when picked from the 

 tree. And it is my opinion that all those statistics laid down in the Italian, 

 French, and Spanish books, take the weight of the olives after drying them 

 when they were ready for the mill — hence the difference in the percentage. 

 The only way in which I could come at the comparison or relative value of 

 the Mission olive for making oil, as compared with other varieties, was this: 

 I found that I produced more oil from an acre of ground than any statistics 

 laid down in any book which I had; hence I satisfied myself, as I can sell 

 all the oil at a high price, that I would go on planting the Mission olive. 



Mr. Hatch: I would like to ask, Mr. Cooper, if you have, in your investi- 

 gations, decided which is the best to raise in California for pickling? 



Mr. Cooper: The Mission. 



Mr. Kimball, of San Diego: You place the temperature at which you 

 dry your olives at 120 degrees, whilst Mr. Dondero claims that olives sub- 

 jected to a temperature greater than 60 degrees the quality of the oil is 



