NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL PERFUMES 137 



Oriental producers of oil of roses, and was probably of less 

 interest to them from a scientific standpoint than on ac- 

 count of the opportunity thus offered of adulterating the 

 costly liquid, a practice always willingly and extensively 

 followed. 



As a matter of fact, there has been very recently pro- 

 duced from all these oils a common, nearly if not quite 

 identical, substance, called by different investigators 

 geraniol, rhodinol, or reuniol ; and chemists are inclined 

 to regard it as the essential odorous principle of oil of 

 roses. It is not yet equal in abundance and character to 

 the oil of roses, but it is believed that only a few trifling 

 additions are needed to make it so. The very latest re- 

 searches claim the discovery of the required substances in 

 the so-called phenyl-ethyl-alcohol, and in the aldehyde of 

 nonylic and decylic acids, and there is already upon the 

 market an artificial oil of roses, prepared according to 

 these formulae. 



Similar perhaps, even finer, results, had before been 

 reached in the production or, more correctly speaking, 

 imitation of another costly perfume, the oil of jasmine. 

 It was proved that this oil, obtainable from the blossoms 

 in very small quantities, consists essentially of the familiar 

 benzyl-alcohol and an acetate of benzyl, which, in an undi- 

 luted state, has a very strong flower fragrance; together 

 with two or three per cent, of a substance, discovered in- 

 deed some time ago, but not sufficiently regarded in point 

 of odorous properties. The latter, which can be produced 

 in beautiful white crystals by the combination of methyl- 

 alcohol (wood spirits) with anthranilic or ortho-amido- 

 benzoic acid, has so distinct and intense a fragrance of 

 orange blossoms that with its aid an artificial orange blos- 

 som oil has been manufactured which is almost equal to the 

 very valuable natural product, and seems qualified to enter 

 into strong competition with it. 



With the above-described substances it was evidently a 

 matter of copying, so to speak, a complex perfume by a 



