Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1882 — Science of Perfumes. [ARTICLE]

Science of Perfumes.

By • process known as enfleurage, which is the exposure of beef fat to fresh flowers in close boxes until it is thoroughly permeated mid charged with their odors, the perfumes of six flowers are obtained, which could in no other manner known to science be preserved apart from the fresh petals. Those flowers are violet, jasmin, tuberose, rose, orange flower and cassic (cinnamon flower). From those six there are fifty or more combinations made for the simulation of the odors of other flowers. Sweet pea is made with jasmin and orange flowers, hvacinth is counterfeited by jnnmin and tuberose; lily of the valley by violet and tuberose. But the resources of the perfumer are by no means confined to the pomades, as the scented fats are termed. He uses many oils, the principal of which are sandalwood, bergamot, lemon, rosemary, neroli (made from bitter orange flowers) paschouli and the attar of roses. It is very difficult to get the last named in a pure state, because its great cost tempts to dishonest adulteration. Very often rose-geranium oil is substituted for it. Musk is another important ingredient, entering as it does, into almost all perfumes, except those which are actually imitations of flower odors, or, as styled by perfumers, “natural,”—-as, for instance, heliotrope, tuberose, white rose and violet.