717 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals. 
THE OIL-SEEDS OF COMMERCE. 
Great as has been the extension of commerce and the 
progress of agricultural supplies within the last few years, 
they are yet far from commensurate to the wants of Europe. 
It is therefore a wise provision that new discoveries arise 
either out of the progress of science or the extension of 
foreign agriculture to meet the increased demands. When 
the oils yielded by the whale fisheries declined, and by their 
enhanced price became expensive, and inadequate to the 
wants of the consumer, increased attention was given to the 
production and manufacture of vegetable oils, and enormous 
quantities of oil-seeds for crushing, from Europe and the 
East, and solid oils from Africa, were obtained. Even these, 
however, large as have been the imports of late, were insuffi¬ 
cient to meet the progressive demand ; and now additional 
supplies of rosin-oil and mineral oils are coming forward, 
obtained either from coal or from asphalte and petroleum. 
The mineral oil springs in some of the states of America 
have turned out complete fortunes to the owners of the land, 
so cheap and abundant is the spontaneous supply from the 
wells sunk, and so easily is it purified. The vegetable oils, 
however, provide, and will long continue to do so, the bulk 
of the consumption. 
The importation of the oil-seeds and oil-cake is a matter 
in which our readers necessarily take an interest, and there¬ 
fore we may with propriety draw attention to the growing 
trade. Four years ago, when writing on this subject, we 
gave the statistics of the imports of seed and cake for a series 
of years; but these, by comparison, now look exceedingly 
trivial. In 1855 our imports of linseed were but 757,000 
qrs., and of rapeseed 162,352 qrs. Last year the imports 
were 1,255,000 qrs. of linseed, and about 300,000 qrs. of 
rapeseed. So with oil-cake; the foreign imports, which in 
1855 were but 80,659 tons, rose in I860 to upwards of 
100,000 tons. 
Besides the two principal oil-seeds already named, we im¬ 
ported in 1859 about 183,000 qrs. of poppy, sesame, sursee, 
and unenumerated oil-seeds. The specific returns of imports 
of these for last year are not yet published by the Board of 
Trade. 
