Research Results For 'Castor'

ADULTERATION

Adulteration is a term not only applied in its proper sense to the fraudulent mixture of articles of commerce, food, drink, drugs, seeds, etc, with noxious or inferior ingredients, but also by magistrates and analysts to accidental impurity, and even in some cases to actual substitution.

The chief objects of adulteration are to increase the weight or volume of the article, to give a colour which either makes a good article more pleasing to the eye or else disguises an inferior one, to substitute a cheaper form of the article, or the same substance from which the strength has been extracted, or to give it a false strength.

Among the adulterations which were commonly practised around 1905 for the purpose of fraudulently increasing the weight or volume of an article are the following: Bread was adulterated with alum or sulphate of copper, which gives solidity to the gluten of damaged or inferior flour; with chalk or carbonate of soda to correct the acidity of such flour; and with boiled rice or potatoes, which enables the bread to carry more water, and thus to produce a larger number of loaves from a given quantity of flour. Wheat flour is adulterated with other inferior flours, as the flour from rice, bean, Indian-corn, potato, and with sulphate of lime, alum, etc. Milk was usually adulterated with water. The adulterations generally present in butter consisted of an undue proportion of salt and water, lard, tallow, and other fats; when of poor quality it was frequently coloured with a little annatto, and, at times, with the juice of carrots. Genuine butter should not contain less than 80 percent of butter-fat. Cheese was also coloured with annatto and other substances. Tea was adulterated chiefly in China with sand, iron-filings, chalk, gypsum, China clay, exhausted tea leaves, and the leaves of the sycamore, horse-chestnut, and plum, whilst colour and weight were added by black-lead, indigo, Prussian-blue (one of the deleterious ingredients used by the Chinese in converting the lowest qualities of black into green teas), gum, turmeric, soapstone, catechu, and other substances.

Coffee was mingled with chicory, roasted wheat, roasted beans, acorns, mangel-wurzel, rye-flour, and coloured with burned sugar and other materials. Chicory was adulterated with different flours, as rye, wheat, beans, etc, and coloured with ferruginous earths, burned sugar, Venetian red, etc. Cocoa and chocolate were mixed with the cheaper kinds of arrow-root, animal matter, corn, sago, tapioca, etc. Sugar was adulterated to some extent with flour. Tobacco was mixed with sugar and treacle, aloes, liquorice, oil, alum, etc, and such leaves as rhubarb, chicory, cabbage, burdock, coltsfoot, besides excess of salt and water. Snuffs were adulterated with carbonate of ammonia, glass, sand, colouring matter, etc.

Confections were adulterated with flour and sulphate of lime. Preserved vegetables were kept green and poisoned by salts of copper. The acridity of mustard is commonly reduced by flour, and the colour of the compound is improved by turmeric. Pepper was adulterated with linseed-meal, flour, mustard husks, etc. Colour was given to pickles by salts of copper, acetate of copper, etc. Ale was adulterated with common salt, Cocculus Indicus, grains of paradise, quassia, and other bitters, sulphate of iron, alum, etc. Porter and stout were mixed with sugar, treacle, salt, and an excess of water. Brandy was diluted with water, and burned sugar was added to improve the colour; sometimes bad whisky was flavoured and coloured so as to resemble brandy, and sold under its name.

Gin was mixed with excess of water, and flavouring matters of various kinds, with alum and tartar, were added. Rum was diluted with water, and the flavour and colour kept up by the addition of cayenne and burned sugar. For champagne gooseberry and other inferior wines were often substituted. Port was manufactured from red Cape and other inferior wines, the body, flavour, strength, and colour being produced by gum-dragon, the washings of brandy casks, and a preparation of German bilberries. Cheap brown sherry was mixed with Cape and other low-priced brandies, and was flavoured with the washings of brandy casks, sugar-candy, and bitter almonds. Pale sherries were produced by gypsum, by a process called plastering, which removes the natural acids as well as the colour of the wine. Other wines were adulterated with elderberry, logwood, Brazil-wood, cudbear, red beetroot, etc, for colour; with lime or carbonate of lime, carbonate of soda, carbonate of potash, and litharge, to correct acidity; with catechu, sloe-leaves, and oak-bark for astringency; with sulphate of lime and alum for removing colour; with cane-sugar for giving sweetness and body; with alcohol for fortifying; and with ether, especially acetic ether, for giving bouquet and flavour.

Medicines, such as jalap, opium, rhubarb, cinchona bark, scammony, aloes, sarsaparilla, squills, etc, were mixed with various foreign substances. Castor-oil has been adulterated with other oils; and inferior oils were often. mixed with cod-liver oil. Cantharides were often mixed with golden-beetle and also artificially-coloured glass.

The adulteration of seeds was largely practised also, the seed which forms the adulterant being of course of the most worthless kind that can be had. Thus turnip-seed was mixed with rape, wild mustard, or charlock, which are steamed and kiln-dried to destroy their vitality, so as to evade detection in the progress of growth; old and useless turnip-seed was also used fraudulently mixed with fresh seeds. Clover was also much mixed with plantain and mere weeds.

Acts against adulteration have been passed in various countries and at various times. In Britain there was a law against it as early as 1267.
Research Adulteration

CASTOR

Research Castor

GEMINI

Gemini, the Twins, is the third sign of the zodiac, so named from its two brightest stars, Castor, of the first magnitude, farthest to the west, and Pollux, of the second, fartliest to the east. Its constituent stars form a binary system revolving in about 250 years. The sun is in Gemini from about the 21st May until about the 21st June, or the longest day.
Research Gemini

MACASSAR OIL

Macassar oil is a kind of oil that was formerly used in dressing the hair. It was so called because it was originally obtained from Macassar, a district of the Island of Celebes. The term is also applied to an imitation of the real oil made of perfumed castor oil and olive oil.
Research Macassar Oil

POLLUX

Research Pollux

ST ELMO'S FIRE

St Elmo's Fire is a meteoric appearance often seen playing about the masts and rigging of ships. Traditionally, if two flames are visible (Castor and Pollux) the sailors considered it a good omen; if only one (Helena), they regarded it as a bad one.
Research St Elmo's Fire

BEAVER

The beaver (Castor) is the only genus of the family Castoridae. The family contains a single genus, Castor, with two species: Castor canadensis, found in the New World, and Castor fibre, found in the Old World. Both species are semi-aquatic rodents noted for the building of dams. The two species differ chiefly in the shape of the nasal bones and are so much alike that some authorities consider them to be varieties of the same species. They are large rodents; the average adult beaver weighs about 16 kg, but specimens as heavy as 40 kg have been found, and some extinct beavers were almost bear- like in size. The beaver is usually about 76 centimetres long and stands less than 30 centimetres high, with a broad, flat, scaly tail about 25 centimetres long.

The body is plump, the back arched, the neck thick, the hind feet webbed, and all the digits clawed. The fur is usually reddish- brown above and lighter or greyish below. The eyes are small and the nostrils closable. The skull is massive, with marked ridges for fixing the muscles that work the jaws. The two front teeth on either jaw are like those of other rodents, wearing away more rapidly behind so as to leave a sharp, enamelled chisel edge. With these the beaver can cut down large trees. It usually selects trees five to 20 centimetres in diameter, but it can fell trees with diameters as large as 76 cm.
Beavers have a pair of anal scent glands, called castors, that secrete a musk-like substance called castoreum, probably for marking territories. The animals tend to be monogamous and have a life span of 20 years or more. The female has one litter a year, usually of two to four young.

Beavers are social animals and in areas where food is abundant and the locality secluded, the number of families in a beaver community can be rather large. The so-called beaver lodge is a unique structure. Three distinct kinds exist, their differences depending on whether they are built on islands, on the banks of ponds, or on the shores of lakes. The island lodge consists of a central chamber, with its floor a little above the level of the water, and with two entrances. One of these, the 'wood entrance', is a straight incline rising from the water, opening into the floor of the hut. The other approach, the 'beaver entrance', is more abrupt in its descent to the water.

The lodge itself is an oven-shaped house of sticks, grass, and moss, woven together and plastered with mud. The room inside is carpeted with bark, grass, and wood chips, sometimes with special store rooms adjoining. The pond lodge is built either a short way back from the edge of the bank, or partly hanging over it, with the front wall built up from the bottom of the pond. The lake lodge is built on the shelving shores of lakes. Dams are used by beavers to widen the area and increase the depth of water around their homes and are constructed either of sticks and poles or more firmly and solidly of mud, brushwood, and stones. As time goes by the beaver repairs and adds to the dam. Floating material lodges there, and vegetation growing on the top adds its roots to the strength of the dam. Frequently the beaver builds a smaller dam downstream in order to back up some water against the original dam and thus decrease the pressure of water on it from the other side. The dams are about 1.5 metres high, usually more than three metres wide at the base, and narrow at the top. A beaver dam more than 300 metres long was found in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

Beaver ponds eventually fill with sediment, and the animals move to a new location. The abandoned area becomes good meadowland. Beaver dams also help control runoff. Although the beaver is a powerful swimmer, it has difficulty dragging over the ground the logs and branches it needs for building and for food. Colonies of beavers therefore often dig canals from the pond to a grove of trees. Such canals are up to one metre wide and deep and often a few hundred metres long. The timber is then readily floated down the canal toward the pond.
Beavers have long been exploited for their fur, and for many years during the 18th and 19th centuries hundreds of thousands of beaver skins were exported to Europe from North America annually. The animals were also sometimes destroyed because of the damage they did to forests and the flooding occasionally caused by dams. Ceaseless slaughter led to near extinction of beavers in both Europe and North America. The beaver is almost extinct in Europe, but is becoming re-established in Canada and in protected areas of the USA.
Research Beaver

CARUNCLE

A caruncle is a small hard outgrowth formed on the seeds of certain plants, such as the castor oil plant. A caruncle is the fleshy excrescence on the head of a fowl, such the comb of a cock or the wattles of a turkey.
Research Caruncle

CASTORIDAE

The Castoridae is a family of rodent animals comprising the single genus, Castor (the beaver).
Research Castoridae

CASTOR OIL PLANT

The castor oil plant (Ricinus communis) or castor bean is a highly poisonous variable herb, shrub or tree (depending upon climate) of the family Euphorbiaceae, native to India and tropical Africa. It has large, reddish coloured leaves which are long-stalked, alternate and palmate with coarsely toothed segments. Terminating the stems are panicle-like inflorescences of green monoecious flowers, the stalked female flowers above the male flowers below, both without petals. The fruit is a spiny, greenish capsule with large, oval, shiny, bean-like, highly poisonous seeds with variable brownish mottling on a whitish background.
Research Castor Oil Plant

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