306 ODOROGRAPHIA. 
tightly corked, and kept in a cool dark place did not deposit a 
trace of it in 17 years. This was pure Singapore oil. By the 
action of hydrochloric acid or acetic anhydride this camphor is 
decomposed into water and patchoulene, C,;H.2,, which boils at 252° 
a eat ORig 
Commercial oil of patchouli is often adulterated to the extent 
of 60 per cent. with cheaper oils, generally those of cedar and 
cubebs. It is remarkable that these have been selected, as the 
camphor of patchouli is isomeric with that of cubebs and with the 
concrete oil of cedar fF. 
Gladstone observed { the rotatory power of ‘ Penang” oil of 
patchouli (determined for a column of liquid 10 inches long) to be 
—120°; the same for Cedar-wood oil +3; the hydrocarbon of 
patchouli oil, patchoulene, —90°, and oil of cubebs + 55°. 
The same authority gives the sp. gr. of three patchouli oils 
as follows :—“ Indian,” ‘9554; “ Penang,” °9592; “ French,” 
10119 (!), all taken at 60° F.; and for their hydrocarbons :— 
“Indian.” Sp. gr. at 20° C. °9211. Boiling-point 254° C. 
“ Penang.” 53 se "9278. a ote. 
“* French,” 5 a De 5 260° C. 
A flowering variety is known to grow on one of the islands near 
Sourabaya, south-east of Sumatra; its leaf is odorous, though not 
so broadly ovate as the cultivated plant, and with shorter petioles ; 
this is grown simply for its flowers, which are sold in large 
quantities for a medicinal purpose in the various markets of Java, 
and fetch a high price. All labiate plants, especially the Coleus 
(which the Patchouli seems to belong to, or be nearly akin to) and 
the Mints, are apt to take a character and habit not true to the 
original plant when transplanted to a climate or soil other than is 
natural to them; and under such conditions the development of 
the odorous principle is as much changed as is the development 
of medicinal properties in many drug-yielding plants. 
A very similar plant to the cultivated one, and of very much 
the same odour, grows in the lofty range of hills northwards of 
Gowahatti in Assam (Hooker’s Journ. of Botany, i. p. 22), and, 
* Bull. Soc. Chim. xxviii. p. 414. 
+ Comptes Rendus, 8 Jan. 1877. 
{ Journ, Chem. Soe. xvii. p. 3. 
