The Romance of Modern Chemistry

CHAPTER XXI FATS AND OILS THE romantic element about suet, candles, butter, soap, and linseed oil is, it must be confessed, not particularly prominent, and yet there is perhaps no class of natural products which ministers in a more won- derful and varied fashion to the needs and comforts of man than the fats and oils. Versatility in an individual, the ability to do half-a-dozen things of the most diverse description is always interesting, and the study of the way in which the stream of natural products is diverted by the wit of man into all sorts of useful channels is similarly fascinating, if not romantic. Fats and oils are natural products, their name is legion, and there is an inexhaustible supply. The oils, however, with which we shall chiefly deal in this chapter, are those which can be described as liquid fats. There will indeed be a brief reference to the so-called “ mineral * oils, which are derived from the petroleum springs of Russia and America, already described in chapter xii., but the “ volatile ” or “ essential11 oils, like oil of nutmeg or oil of lemons, will be left out of account, at least for the present. If we omit consideration of the mineral and the essential oils, we may say that the numerous fats and oils derived from both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms are remarkably similar in chemical composition, 237