MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 199 



lucrative field. Michigan is an ideal place for the distillation of the oil of win- 

 tergreen. In fact, the genuine oil is hardly to he found on the market. Some 

 firms being even unwilling to list it in their price lists because of the diffi- 

 culty of obtaining the genuine oil. There is then a positive need for the 

 development of this industry. Not that the synthetic oil cannot he used for 

 flavoring and other purposes just as well, hut there always will be a demand 

 for the natural oil in medicine. The distillation of these oils is compara- 

 tively simple. I, myself, in the laboratory have distilled the oil from a cart- 

 load of leaves of wintergreen, obtaining 100 ounces per 1,000 pounds of leaves. 

 In addition to the plants above mentioned we have been growing thyme and 

 orris root. The government issued 20 years ago a Bulletin on "Can Perfumery 

 Farming Succeed in the United States?" This was printed in the year book 

 of the Department of Agriculture for 1898. 



2. Alkaloids and proximate principles. It would be a great boom to our 

 chemical industries if many of the chemicals now used abroad were manu- 

 factured here. During the past few years some of the active principles have 

 been extracted from American Drugs. One American firm is now producing 

 large quantities of atropine. Comparatively large quantities of the active 

 principles of belladonna, digitalis, Hydrastis, etc., are used in medicine. 



The growth of the camphor industry in the Southern United States is but 

 an example of what can be accomplished in our country. There was hardly 

 an incentive to develop this industry, as almost every precedent pointed to 

 the fact that it would be almost impossible to manufacture camphor at a 

 price to compete with that produced on the Island of Formosa. Yet the sta- 

 tistics are showing that even this can be produced in Florida at a profit. 



3. Specialties. Some plants are used in some special form and it would 

 be well for the grower to be conversant with the uses to which the crude drug 

 is put. Insect powder for instance is prepared by powdering the dried, un- 

 opened flowers or flower buds of two distinct species of chrysanthemum. One 

 can readily see what a very great advantage it would be to not only grow the 

 plants yielding insect powder but to grind them and put up the powder for the 

 use of the trade. This would save transportation in the bulk of the crude 

 drug and the labor involved in powdering would be well repaid. At the pre- 

 sent tipie much of our insect powder comes from Japan and retails for about 

 80c a pound. The yield of this powder per acre should be about a thousand 

 pounds. Of course this would involve a great deal of labor in picking the 

 flowers at the right stage of development and they would have to be very 

 quickly and carefully dried so that the active principles would be retainedd. 



College of Pharmacy, University of Michigan. 



