32 Dr. Playfair’s Lecture on the Great Exhibition of 1851. 
rivals, the increase of the former diminishing the use of the latter. 
Costly perfumes, formerly employed as a mask to want of clean- 
liness, are less required now that soap has become a type of civ- 
ilization. Perfumers, if they do not occupy whole streets with — 
their shops, as they did in ancient Capua, show more science in — 
attaining their perfumes than those of former times. The Jury — 
in the Exhibition, or rather two distinguished chemists of that — 
Jury, Dr. Hoffman and Mr. De la Rue, ascertained that some of © 
the most delicate perfumes were made by chemical artifice, and 
not, as of old, by distilling them from flowers. The perfume of ; 
flowers often consists of oils and ethers, which the chemist can 
compound artificially in his laboratory. Commercial enterprise 
has availed itself of this fact, and sent to the Exhibition, in the — 
form of essences, perfumes thus prepared. Singularly enough, 
they are generally derived from substances of intensely disgusting — 
odor. A peculiarly fetid oil, termed “fusel oil,” is formed in 
making brandy and whisky. This fusel oil, distilled with sul- 
sulphuric acid and bicromate of potash. The oil of pine-apples 
is obtained from the product of the action of putrid cheese on 
sugar, or by making a soap with butter, and distilling it with 
alcohol and sulphuric acid, and is now largely employed in Eng- 
land in the preparation of pine-apple ale. Oil of grapes and oil © 
of cognac, used to impart the flavor of French cognac to British _ 
brandy, are little else than fusel oil. he artificial oil of bitter — 
almonds, now so largely employed in perfuming soap and for — 
flavoring confectionary, is prepared by the action of nitric acid — 
on the foetid oils of gas-tar. Many a fair forehead is damped 
with eau de millefleurs, without knowing that its essential ingre- 
dient is derived from the drainage of cowhouses. The winter 
green oil, imported from New Jersey, being produced froma — 
plant indigenous there, is artificially made from willows anda _ 
body procured in the distillation of wood. All these are direct 
modern appliances of science to an industrial purpose, and imply — 
an acquaintance with the highest investigations of organic chem- — 
istry. Let us recollect that the oil of lemons, turpentine, oil of 
juniper, oil of roses, oil of copaiba, oil of rosemary, and many 
other oils, are identical in composition, and it is not difficult to 
conceive that perfumery may derive still further aid from Chem- | 
istr 4 
y 
much improved by the aid of chemistry. Tallow candles, or 
Bn ge me ec ee 
| 
phuric acid and acetate of potash, gives the oil of pears. ‘The 
oil of apples is made from the same fusel oil by distillation with | 
Candles.*—The manufacture of candles has recently been : 
* Thave had the advantage of seeing the admirable Report of Jury XXTX, and — 
porter with permission of its author, of some new information con 
