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Show African Oil Palm Has Great Variety of Uses Unlike the date and the coconut palm, the oil palm is not at all well known. Nevertheless, It is exceedingly exceeding-ly useful. In tha Congo, writes Mr. Isaac F. Marcosson in "An African Ad- venture," und for that matter in vlr- ! rually all of the West Africa, it is the staff of life. Thousands of years ago ae Egyptians Egyp-tians used the sap for embalming the bodies of their kingly dead. Today the oil palm not only represents the most important agricultural industry of the colony it has long slnte surpassed rubber as the premier product but it has an almost bewildering variety of uses. It is food and drink and shelter. From the trunk the native extracts his wine ; from the fruit comes oil for soap, for salad dressing and for margarine mar-garine ; with the leaves the native makes a roof for his house; with the fiber he makes his mats, his baskets and hU strings for fishing nets. The wood itself he uses In building. An oil palm will bear fruit within seven years after the young tree Is planted. The fruit comes In wh,at It I called a regime, which resembles a huge bunch of grapes; each frutt In the cluster Is npprorlmately the slae of a large date. The outer part, which is called the pericarp, Is almost entirely en-tirely yellow oil Incased In a tnlck Skin. Imbedded In the oil Is the kS ael, which contains a finer oil. Th fralt Is boiled down, and the kernel re dried and exported in bags to England, where they are broken open and the oil In them used for making margarine. ' For hundreds of years tli natives have gathered the fruit of the palm and have extracted the oil. The waste at first was enormous; the blacks threw away the kernels because thoy were unaware of the valuable substance sub-stance Inside. Youth's Companion. |