330 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



obtain the freshness and delicacy of the flowers, it is necessary to have them 

 fresh and sweet. The perfection of the flowers determines the perfection of 

 the perfume. 



At first Millon operated by shutting out the contact of the air. But now 

 he favors its presence, for he has found that the perfume, instead of dissipat- 

 ing rapidly like the essences, has great fixedness. It is only through con- 

 tact with other principles of the plant that it undergoes alteration. Once 

 isolated, it is beyond their influence, and experiences no further change. 

 Millon thus for several years has kept perfumes at the bottom of open tubes 

 or capsules open to the air without sensible alteration ; and according to 

 him, this fixedness or resistance to atmospheric change is a fundamental 

 characteristic of perfumes. 



It has not been possible yet to submit the perfumes to elementary analysis, 

 the flowers furnishing so little of it ; a kilogramme giving only a few milli- 

 grams of the aromatic principle. 



The residue of the operation by ether or sulphuret of carbon contains 

 wax and fatty and coloring matters, and it is very difficult to separate the 

 aromatic principle from them. Alcohol answers best for this purpose. It 

 does not dissolve the waxy part, while it removes completely the odor, 

 operating with alcohol on a grain of the residue, the perfume is taken up 

 with a little oil and the coloring matter, and the aromatic residue will have 

 lost in the process only a few hundredths of its weight. 



The perfume is almost indefinitely diffusible in the air, showing its pre- 

 sence by its odor, without any sensible loss of weight. It is equally diffusible 

 in distilled water, when some drops of an alcoholic solution are poured into 

 it ; but in ordinary Avater, the odor is dissipated, showing its easy altcrability 

 with reagents. 



The facility with which these perfumes dissolve in alcohol, fats and oils, 

 shows the ways in which it may be industrially employed. The essential 

 point is, that the small quantity of product afforded by the flower represents 

 exactly the amount of perfume, and a gramme of residue proceeding from a 

 kilogramme of flowers, aromatizes to the same degree fat, or oil, and under a 

 volume a thousand times less produces the same effects. The process, then, 

 takes the volatilizable part of the flower, concentrates and preserves it, and 

 puts it up for transfer, without loss, to the perfumery shops, where the final 

 preparations are made. Moreover, the work of incorporating the perfume 

 of the flowers with fats and oils, to-day so costly and so incomplete, will be 

 replaced by a simple mixing or solution, which may be clone at any conve- 

 nient time, or place. It is, for perfumery, a new art of extreme simplicity. 



ON THE SUGAR OF THE SORGHUM SACCHARATUM, OR CHINESE 



SUG API-CANE. 



At a late meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, Dr. A. A. 

 Hayes read a paper upon the kind of sugar developed in the Sorghum sac- 

 charatum, or Chinese Sugar-Cane, as follows : 



The introduction of tin's interesting plant has led to many somewhat ex- 

 travagant suggestions, in relation to its future bearing on the agriculture and 



