530 ODOROGRAPHIA. 
cubebs, also with camphor of patchouli; probably for this reason 
and being of an odour which is not antagonistic, oil of cedar is 
selected as a convenient adulterant to oil of patchouli. 
With pentachloride of phosphorus, camphor of cedar yields an 
aromatic substance which has not yet been fully investigated. 
By distillation with phosphoric anhydride it is resolved into water 
and cedrene C,;H,,, identical with the liquid portion squeezed out 
of the original crude product, the sp. gr. of which, at 15° C., is 
0-984, and boiling-point 248° C.* Bertagnini found + that oil of 
cedar combines with the acid sulphites of the alkali metals. 
In the American pencil factories some oil is obtained by col- 
lecting the condensed vapours of the drying-chambers, but it does 
not realize the price of the ordinary distilled oil. 
Oil of “ Jamaica Cedar” or “ Honduras Cedar” is distilled 
from the Cedrella odorata, Linn.t, a native of the Caribbee 
Islands and Barbadoes. The bark of the tree is rough, marked 
with longitudinal fissures; this, as well as the berries and leaves, 
has a smell like Asafcetida when fresh. The timber, however, has 
a very pleasant odour of cedar, whence the name of ‘ Cedar” is 
commonly applied to it in the British West India Islands, 
although it belongs to a totally different natural order to the tree 
yielding the pencil cedar. It is the cedar of which cigar boxes 
are mostly made, but other species of Cedrella are also used, as 
can be observed by the differences apparent in the woods of cigar 
boxes arriving from different localities of cigar manufacture. All 
these woods are not yet botanically identified, but they are 
evidently nearly allied and are probably all derived from species 
of Cedrella. 
The C. odorata forms an immense tree, with a trunk sometimes 
6 feet in diameter, and furnishes one of the most useful woods in 
Jamaica. There are canoes in the West Indies 40 feet long 
formed out of these trunks, a purpose for which it is extremely 
well adapted; the wood being soft is easily hollowed out, and 
being light will carry a great weight on the water. It is also 
used for the wainscoting of rooms and to make chests, because of 
* Walter, Ann. Chim. Phys. [3] 1. p. 498. 
+ Compt. Rend. xxxy. p. 800. 
t Sloane’s ‘Voyage to Madeira, Barbadoes, Jamaica,’ etc., 1767, il. 
tab. 220. fig. 2; ‘Browne’s Civil and Nat. Hist. of Jamaica,’ 1798, p. 159, 
t. 10. f. 1; Lamarck, ‘ Iilust. des genres,’ t. 137. 
