Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — CANDLES FROM PLANTS. [ARTICLE]

CANDLES FROM PLANTS.

Vegetables Which Bear Wax and Tallow —Facts About Camphor. Several very curious substances of an inflammable nature are produced by plants, said a naturalist to a Washington Star writer. Many vegetable species bear wax, which in the form of minute scales on the surface of the plum and other stone fruit makes what Is called the “bloom. ” It exists so abundantly in the fruit of a Virginia inytle that the latter has received the name of “candle berry.” These berries are collected in great quantities for their wax and candles made from them burn with remarkable brightness and freedom from smoke, at the same time giving out a pleasant fragrance. A wax-bearing tree exists in South Africa, the berries of which yield a substance which is made into candles by the Dutch. There are several species of wax palms in South America. One of them has its leaves covered with scales of wax, while the trunk of another kind is covered with the wax as with a varnish. A substance very like tallow is yielded by a tree in China, the seed vessels of which are hard, brownish husks. Each of them contains three round white kernels, about the size and shape of hazelnuts. These kernels have small stones inside them, around which the fatty matter lies. From the pit of the stone an oil for burning in lamps Is pressed. Almost all the candles used in the south of China are made from this vegetable tallow. A tree abounds on the Malabar coast of India called the “piney” which bears a pulpy fruit that yields a great quantity of solid tallow approaching wax in firmness and superior to animal fat for the manufacture of candles. Another remarkable inflammable substance secreted by plants is camphor. It is chiefly obtained from a species of laurel native to the East Indies. In preparing it pieces of the roots are put into an iron vessel tightly covered. When the vessel is heated the camphor rises in the form of vapor and is condensed on the cover. That is the primitive method, iat all events, though I believe that it is improved upon by newly invented processes. In old trees the camphor is sometimes found, when the trunks are split open, in a very pure £tate, forming small concretions or “tears.”