In Ceylon the oil is known as kekune oil, and a good deal of it might be obtained there from the district of Badulla.  From the trials made it appears that it cannot be used as a drying oil, but will probably answer best as a substitute for rape oil.  Samples have been sent to several clothiers, and the nature and quality of the oil renders it most applicable to their purposes.

COLZA (Brassica oleracea), a variety of the common cabbage, is much grown in the South of Europe and other parts, for the oil obtained by pressure from its seeds, and which is used for lamps and other purposes.  The plant will not thrive on sand or clay, but requires a rich light soil.  After the ground has been well ploughed and manured, the seed should be sown in July, in furrows eight or ten inches asunder.  The plants are transplanted about October.  When ripe the stalks are reaped with a sickle, and the seeds threshed out with a flail.  The cake, after the oil is expressed, is an excellent food for cattle.

Like all the oleaginous plants cultivated for their seed, colza greatly impoverishes the soil.

In Peru the caoutchouc is used as a substitute for candles.  A roll of it (which is generally about a yard long and three inches in diameter) is cut lengthways into four parts, but before it is lighted the piece is rolled up in a green plantain leaf, to prevent it from melting or taking fire down the sides.  The natives of Peru also bruize the beans of a species of wild cacao after they have been well dried, and use the substance instead of tallow in their lamps.

Mr. Dearman, writing from Dacca, to Dr. Spry, Secretary to the Agricultural and Horticultural Societies of India, in 1839, says—­“I will send you some seeds from a tree, which resemble chestnuts.  One of these seeds, after taking off the shell, being stuck on the point of a penknife, and lighted at a candle flame, will burn without the least odor for four or five minutes, giving a light equal to two or three candles.  From the flower of the tree (he adds), I am told, is distilled a delightful scent.” [I presume this must be the candle-nut tree.]

At the Feejee and Hawaian islands, the seeds of the castor oil plant and of the candle-nut tree (Aleurites triloba) are strung together and used for candles.  Species of torches are also made from the candle wood in Demerara.

THE CANDLEBERRY MYRTLE (Myrica cerifera) abounds in the Bahama Islands.  The shrub produces a small green berry, which, like the hog plum, puts out from the trunk and larger limbs.  Much patient labor is required in gathering these berries, and from them is obtained a beautiful green wax, which burns very nearly, if not fully, as well as the spermaceti, or composition candles imported from abroad.  Not long since Mr. Thos.  B. Musgrove, of St. Salvador (or Cat Island), obtained about 80 lbs. of this wax, and made some excellent candles of it.  The method of procuring this wax is by boiling the berries in a copper or brass vessel for some time.  Iron pots are found to darken and cloud the wax.  The vessel after a sufficient time is taken from the fire, and when cool the hardened wax, floating on the top of the water, is skimmed off.