Volatile oils are produced on a small scale in different localities from mimosa, thyme, geranium, orangeblossom, and aniseed; they are used in a perfume factory at Tripoli, and in another at Jaffa, and are also exported. Oil from the bay berry is extracted in considerable quantities about Antioch and in the south of the Aleppo vilayet for use as an ingredient of soap.
Inferior olive oil is used for making soap, and the centres of this large industry are naturally in the chief olive districts, the Lebanon, and in or about Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus, Tripoli, Nablus, and Jaffa. The factories are mostly quite small, many having a single boiler, and only a few in the Lebanon and Tripoli districts have iron pans, the others using receptacles of stone or brick with an iron plate at the bottom. Owners often work not on their own account, but for regular customers who provide the oil. Modern methods are followed in two factories (Russo-Jewish and German) at Haifa. The total number of factories is about 150, with an annual output of some 20,000 tons, which is partly exported to other parts of the Turkish Empire, and also to Egypt and Cyprus. Besides olive oil, the ingredients used are caustic soda, carbonate of sodà (for which the ash of a plant called killi, found about Tadmur and Es-Salt, is often substituted), bay oil, lime, and tale, the mixtures varying slightly in different localities. The soap is cooled on an earthen floor, where it is cut into squares, and turns out very hard, a quality which recommends it to native taste.In some years the supply of oil is not equal to the demand, and is supplemented from outside. Experiments with imported vegetable oils (cotton seed, coco-nut, and groundnut) have also been made, but the results are not greatly liked.
Milling, &c. Mills driven by motor, steam, or water-power are met with all over the country; the windmills introduced in the middle last century have been given up. The old water-mills, which sometimes work as many as fifteen sets of mill-
