being at
the rate of very nearly 24 lbs. of oil from 100 lbs. of seed.

Notwithstanding the great value of its oil, and the facility with
which it can be obtained in the West Indies, the moringa has been
hitherto valued merely as an ornamental shrub, and cultivated for
the sake of its young pods or the horseradish of its roots, as
luxuries for the table.

The oil is peculiarly valuable for the formation of ointments, from
its capability of being kept for almost any length of time without
entering into combination with oxygen. This property, together with
the total absence of color, smell, and taste, peculiarly adapts it
to the purposes of the perfumer, who is able to make it the medium
for arresting the flight of those highly volatile particles of
essential oil, which constitute the aroma of many of the most
odoriferous flowers, and cannot be obtained by any other means, in a
concentrated and permanent form. To effect this, the petals of the
flowers, whose odor it is desired to obtain, are thinly spread over
flakes of cotton wool saturated with this oil, and the whole
enclosed in air tight tin cases, where they are suffered to remain
till they begin to wither, when they are replaced by fresh ones, and
the process thus continued till the oil has absorbed as much as was
desired of the aroma; it is then separated from the wool by
pressure, and preserved under the name of _essence_, in well stopped
bottles.

By digesting the oil thus impregnated in alcohol, which does not
take up the fixed oil, a solution of the aroma is effected in the
spirit, and many odoriferous tinctures or waters, as they are
somewhat inaccurately termed, prepared. By this process most
delicious perfumes might be obtained from the flowers of the _Acacia
tortuosa_, _Pancratium carribeum_, _Plumeria alba_, _Plumeria
rubra_, and innumerable other flowers, of the most exquisite
fragrance, which abound within the tropics, blooming unregarded, and
wasting their odors on the barren air."

THE OIL PALM.

There are several species of this genus of beautiful palms of the
tribe _Cococinae_, but that chiefly turned to account is _Elais
guineensis_, a native of the Coast of Guinea to the south of Fernando
Po, which furnishes the best oil.

There are three other varieties--_E. melanococca_, a native of New
Granada, _E. Pernambucan