name with many unscrupulous dealers in the cheap and nasty. "Burning
fluid" is usually another name for naphtha, or something worse.
Gasoline, naphtha, benzine, kerosene, paraffine, and many other
dangerous fluids which make the fireman's vocation necessary are all the
product of petroleum. These oils are produced by the distillation or
refining of crude petroleum, and inasmuch as the public, especially
firemen, are daily brought into contact with them it is proper that
they should know something of their properties. Refining as commonly
practiced involves three successive operations. The apparatus employed
consists of an iron still connected with a coil or worm of wrought-iron
pipe, which is submerged in a tank of water for the purpose of cooling
it. The end of this pipe is fixed with a movable spout, which can be
transferred or switched from one to another of half a dozen pipes which
come around close to it, but which lead into different tanks containing
different grades of the distillate. When the still has been filled with
crude oil the fire is lighted beneath it, and soon the oil begins to
boil. The first products of distillation are gases which, at ordinary
temperatures, pass through the coil without being condensed, and escape.
When the vapors begin to condense in the worm the oil trickles from the
end of the coil into the pipe leading to the appropriate receiving tank.

The first oil obtained is known as gasoline, used in portable gas
machines for making illuminating gas. Then, in turn, come naphthas of
a greater or less gravity, benzine, high test water white burning oil,
such as Pratt's Astral common burning oil or kerosene, and paraffine
oils. When the oil has been distilled it is by no means fit for use,
having a dirty color and most offensive smell; it is then refined. For
this purpose it is pumped into a large vat or agitator, which holds from
two hundred and fifty to one thousand barrels. There is then added to
the oil about two per cent, of its volume of the strongest sulphuric