In Mysore, after being cut it is stacked for a week, then exposed to the sun for three days, but gathered into heaps at night; and between every two days of such drying, it is kept a day in the heap.  By this process, the pods burst and shed their seeds without thrashing.

The seeds contain an abundance of oil, which might be substituted for olive oil; it is procured from them in great quantities, in Egypt, India, Kashmir, China, and Japan, where it is used both for cooking and burning.  It will keep for many years and not acquire any rancid smell or taste, but in the course of a year or two becomes quite mild, so that when the warm taste of the seed, which is in the oil when first expressed, is worn off, it is used for all the purposes of salad oil.  It possesses such qualities as fairly entitle it to introduction into Europe; and if divested of its mucilage, it might perhaps compete with oil of olives, at least for medicinal purposes, and could be raised in any quantity in the British Indian Presidencies.  It is sufficiently free from smell to admit of being made the medium for extracting the perfume of the jasmine, the tuberose, narcissus, camomile, and of the yellow rose.  The process is managed by adding one weight of flowers to three weights of oil in a bottle, which being corked is exposed to the rays of the sun for forty days, when the oil is supposed to be sufliciently impregnated for use.  This oil, under the name of Gingilie oil, is used in India to adulterate oil of almonds.

The flour of the seed, after the oil is expressed, is used in making cakes, and the straw serves for fuel and manure.

The oil is much used in Mysore for dressing food, and as a common lamp oil.  From 200 to 400 quarters under the name of Niger seed are imported annually into Liverpool for expressing oil.

Three varieties of Til are extensively cultivated throughout India, for the sake of the fine oil expressed from their seeds, the white seeded variety, the parti-colored, and the black.  It is from the latter that the sesamum or gingelly oil of commerce is obtained.  Sesamum seed contains about 45 per cent. of oil.  Good samples of the oil were shown at the Great Exhibition from Vizianagram, Ganjain, Hyderabad, Tanjore, the district of Moorshedabad, and Gwalior.  The gingelly seed is stated to be worth about L4 per ton in the North Circars.

An oil resembling that of sesamum is obtained from the seed of Guizotea oleifera and Abyssinica, a plant introduced from Abyssinia, and common in Bengal.  The ram til, or valisaloo seeds, yield about 34 per cent, of oil.  The oil is generally used for burning, and is worth locally about 10d. per gallon.

BLACK TIL (Verbesena sativa).—­This is known as kutsela or kala til, in the Deccan.  It is chiefly cultivated in Mysore and the western districts of Peninsular India, as well as in the Bombay presidency.