13 



demand as ever among those who can afford them ; third, the 

 chemical products, being produced at a far lower cost, have 

 enabled the perfumer, the confectioner, the soap-maker, to reach 

 an entirely new clientele — the poor. There is one further point of 

 interest — the laboratory's ultimate dependence on the land in the 

 matter of perfumes — for in the majority of cases it is from plant 

 substances, not coal tar, that the synthetic products are made. 



Lastly comes the art of perfumery proper, for which these 

 various products, natural and synthetic, furnish the raw materials 

 — an art in which the Frenchman excels. The perfumer is a 

 musician who from many notes (rose, violet, orange-blossom, 

 etc.) strikes a harmonious chord of scent — for a scent is ob- 

 tained only by the most artful combination of odors, each of 

 which must be absolutely pure, the slightest impurity striking a 

 jarring note to the trained nostril. The composition of the per- 

 fume of violet, for instance, is as follows : essence of violet, 

 natural vanilla, tincture of orris-root, a touch of vetiver, essence 

 of violet leaves, and artificial ionine. 



One striking fact remains — that the enterprising American 

 people, with their almost unbounded natural advantages and their 

 protective tariff, have never entered into rivalry with the people 

 of Grasse. To-day the total production of essential oils in the 

 United States (150,000 pounds of peppermint oil, and small 

 quantities of oil of wormwood, wintergreen, witchhazel, and spruce 

 oil) does not exceed ^500,000, about one twelfth of that produced 

 by the one little town in France. 



A PECULIAR HABITAT FOR CAMPTOSORUS * 



By Ralph Curtiss Benedict 



The following note and photograph shown in the figure were 

 recently sent to Dr. Britton, and he has turned them over to me 

 to record. 



"... Arthur Leeds of Phila. and I found two gum trees 

 in the Blackwater River, Virginia, near Waverley, adorned 

 with large colonies of Camptosorus. These trees were standing 

 closer than ten feet ; and the closest search subsequently failed to 



* Illustrated with the aid of the Catherine McManes fund. 



