1852.] 



PENNY WISDOM. 



105 



Whether any perfumed lady would he disconcerted iit learning 

 the sources of her perfumes, each lady must decide for herself; 

 but it seems that Mr. De la Rue and Doctor Hofl'man, in their 

 capacities as jurors of the Great Exhibition, have made terrible 

 havoc among the perfumery. They have found that many of 

 the scents said to be procured from flowers and fruits, are really 

 produced from anything but flowery sources ; the perfumers are 

 chemists enough to know that similar odours may be often 2)ro- 

 duced from disshnilar substances, and if the half-crown bottle of 

 perfume really has the required odour, the perfumer does not 

 expect to be asked what kind of odour was emitted by the sub- 

 stance whence the perfume was obtained. Now, Doctor Lyon 

 Playfair, iu his summary of the jury investigation abjve alluded 

 to, broadly tells us that these primary odours are often most 

 unbearable. " A peculiarly foetid oil, termed fusel oil, is formed 

 in making brandy and whiskey; this fusel oil, distilled with 

 sulphuric acid and acetate of potash, gives the oil of pears. The 

 oil of ajjples is made from tlie same fusel oil, by distillation with 

 sulphuric acid and bichromate of potash. The oil of pine-apples 

 is obtained fi'om a product of the action of putrid cheese on sugar, 

 or by making a soap with butter, and distiUing it with alcohol 

 and sulphuric acid ; and is now largely employed in England in 

 making pine-apple ale. Oil of grapes and oil of cognac, used to 

 impart the flavour of French cognac to British brandy, are little 

 less than fusel oil. The artificial oil of bitter almonds, now so 

 largely employed in perfuming soap and for flavouring confec- 

 tionary, is prepared by the action of nitiic acid on the foetid oils 

 of gas-tar. Many a fair forehead is damped ^\dth eau de mille- 

 Jleurs, without knowing that its essential ingredient is derived 

 from the drainage of cowhouses. In all such cases as these, the 

 chemical science involved is, really, of a high order, and the 

 perfume produced is a bona-fide perfume, not one whit less 

 sterling than if produced from fruits and flowers. The only 

 question is one of commercial honesty, in giving a name no 

 longer applicable, and charging too highly for a cheaply produced 

 scent. This mode of saving a penny is chemically right, but 

 commercially wrong. 



The French make a large quantity of sugar from beet-root ; 

 and in the processes of manufacture there remains behind a thick, 

 black, unctuous molasses, containing much sugar, but from other 

 causes impregnated with a nauseous taste and a most disagi-eeable 

 smell. Men will not eat it, but pigs will ; and so to the pigs it has 

 gone, imtil E. Dubranfaut showed (a? he has lately done,) that 

 this molasses is something better than pig's meat. He dissolves, 

 and decomposes, and washes, and clari ties, until he ends by pro- 

 ducing a kind of eau sucre, a beautiful clear and colourless syrup 

 or sugar-liquid, containing nearly the whole of the saccharine 

 principle from the ofleusi\e and almost valueless molasses. 



How can we mal;e one kind of paint or liquid produce many 

 different colours, an^l this witli an amount of material almost 

 beneath the power of mm to weigh or measure ? Mr. De la Rue 

 has solved this question by the production of his beautiful irides- 

 cent and opalescent paper. Both mechanically and optically, the 

 production of these papers is strikingly interesting. Water is 

 poured into a flat vessel ; and, when quite tranquil, a very mnnite 

 quantity of spirit varnish is sprinkled upon the surfaco : this, by 

 a species of attraction between the two liquids, spreads out on all 

 sides, and covers the whole surface in a film of exquisite thinness. 

 A sheet of paper or a card-board, or any other article, is then 

 dipped fairly into the water, and raised gently with that surface 

 uppermost which is to receive [he coloured adoi'nment; it lifts up 

 the film of varnish from oft' the surface of the water, and this 

 film becomes deposited on the paper itself. The paper is held 

 in an inclined position, to allow the water to drain off from 

 beneath the film ; and the varnish then remains permanent on 

 the surface of the paper. Now, the paper thus coated with 



colourless varnish exliil]its the prismatic tints with exquisite clear- 

 ness ; the film of varnish is so extremely thin — so far beneath 

 anything that could be laid on Avith a brush or pencil — that it 

 reliects light on the same principle as the soap-bubble, exhibiting 

 dift'erences of colour on account of minute diflerences in the 

 thickness of the film at different parts; and not only so, but the 

 self-same sjjot exhibits different tints according to the angle at 

 which we view it. It is a lovely material, and lovely things may 

 be produced from it. We cannot speak of it as producing some- 

 thing out of nothing ; l>ut it is a means of producing a beautiful 

 result with a marvellou.dy small expenditure of materials. 



The clinkei-s, ashes, or cinders, which remain in furnaces after 

 metallurgic operations have been completed, may appear to be 

 among the most useless of all useless things. Not so, however. 

 If they contain any metal, there are men who will ferret it out 

 by so:ne means or otlier. Not many years since, the ashes of 

 the coke used in brass-furnaces were carted away as i-ubbish ; but 

 shrewd people have detected a good deal of volatilised cop- 

 per mixed up therewith ; and the brass-makers can now find 

 a market for their ashes as an infeiior kind of copper ore. It 

 needs hardly to be stated that all soits of filings aird raspings, 

 cuttings and clippings, borings and turnings, and odds ani ends 

 in the leal metallic ibi'm, ai'e all available fo;' re-melting, \vh;itever 

 the metal may be — all is grist that comes to this mill. If the 

 metal be a cheap one, it will not jiay to extricate a stray per 

 ceutage from ashes and clinkers ; but, if it be one of the more 

 costly metals, not only are all scraps and ashes and skimmings 

 preser\-ed, but particles are sought for in a way that may well 

 astonish those to whom the subject is new. Take gold as an 

 example. There are Jew dealere and Christiaii dealeis also, who 

 sedulously wait upon gilders and jewellers at intervals, to buy up 

 everything (be it what it may) which has gold in or upon it. 

 Old and useless gilt frames are bought ; they are burnt, and the 

 ashes so treated as to yield up all their gold. The fragments, and 

 dust of gold, which arise during gilding, are bought and refined. 

 The leather cushion which the gilder uses is bought when too old 

 for use, for the sake of the gold pai'ticles which insinuate them- 

 selves nito odd nooks and corners. The old leather apron of a 

 jeweller is bought; it is a rich prize, for in spite of its dirty look, 

 it possesses very auriferous atti'actions. The sweepings of the 

 floor of a jewellei-'s workshop ai'e bought; and there is probably 

 no broom, the use of which is stipulated for with more stiictness 

 than that with which such a floor is swept. In short, there are iu 

 this world (and at no time so much as at the present) a set of 

 veiy useful people, who may be designated manutactnriug scaven- 

 gei-s : they clear away refuse which woidd else encumber the ground 

 and they put money into the pockets both of buyers andsellers ; they 

 do eftectuaUy create a something out of a commercial nothing. 



How to save a penny by using dairy drainage, and slaughter- 

 house drainage, and house drainage, and street drainage, and 

 stable drainage, and old bones, and old rags, and spent tan, and 

 flax steep-water — how to create value by using such refuse as 

 manure for fields and gardens — is one of the great qu&stions of 

 the day, which no oue who takes up a newspaper can fail to find 

 elucidated in some form or other. Chemistry is here the grand 

 oconomiser. C hemistry is indeed Nature's housewife, making 

 the best of everything. " The clippings of the traveUiug tinker," 

 as Dr. Playfair well says iu one of his lectures, " are mixed with 

 the parings of horses' hoofs from the smithy, or the cast-oft' 

 woollen garments of the inhabitants of a sister isle, and soon 

 afterwards, in the form of dyes of brightest blue, grace the dress 

 of courtly dames. The main ingredient of the ink with which 

 I now write was possibly once part of the broken hoop of an old 

 beer barrel. The bones of dead animals yield the chief con- 

 stituent of lucifer matches. The dreg-s of port wine — carefully 

 rejected by the port wine driidier in decanting his favouiite 



