t as it is very much less than the amount dissolved when
food is cooked in nickel-plated vessels it cannot be regarded as
harmful.

Even more unsaturated fats may be hydrogenated. Fish oil has hitherto
been almost unusable because of its powerful and persistent odor. This
is chiefly due to a fatty acid which properly bears the uneuphonious
name of clupanodonic acid and has the composition of C_{18}H_{28}O_{2}.
By comparing this with the symbol of the odorless stearic acid,
C_{18}H_{36}O_{2}, you will see that all the rank fish oil lacks to make
it respectable is eight hydrogen atoms. A Japanese chemist, Tsujimoto,
has discovered how to add them and now the reformed fish oil under the
names of "talgol" and "candelite" serves for lubricant and even enters
higher circles as a soap or food.

This process of hardening fats by hydrogenation resulted from the
experiments of a French chemist, Professor Sabatier of Toulouse, in the
last years of the last century, but, as in many other cases, the Germans
were the first to take it up and profit by it. Before the war the copra
or coconut oil from the British Asiatic colonies of India, Ceylon and
Malaya went to Germany at the rate of $15,000,000 a year. The palm
kernels grown in British West Africa were shipped, not to Liverpool, but
to Hamburg, $19,000,000 worth annually. Here the oil was pressed out and
used for margarin and the residual cake used for feeding cows produced
butter or for feeding hogs produced lard. Half of the copra raised in
the British possessions was sent to Germany and half of the oil from it
was resold to the British margarin candle and soap makers at a handsome
profit. The British chemists were not blind to this, but they could do
nothing, first because the English politician was wedded to free trade,
second, because the English farmer would not use oil cake for his stock.
France was in a similar situation. Marseilles produced 15,500,000
gallons of oil from peanuts grown largely in the French African
colonies--but shipped the oil-cake on to Hamburg. Meanwhile the Germans,
in pursuit of their policy of attaining economic independence, were
striving to develop their own tropical territory. The subjects of King
George who because they had the misfortune to live in India were
excluded from the British South African dominions or mistreated when
they did come, were invited to come to German East Africa and set to
raising peanuts in rivalry to French Senegal and Br