- 36 - 



Spain and in Algeria, and the small quantities produced have already 

 been used up. Consumers of large quantities will therefore have to 

 comfort themselves with hope for the coming autumn. 



Since some time endeavours are also being made in Sicily to 

 cultivate European pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium). Hitherto the distil- 

 ling experiments were entirely confined to plants growing wild. Such 

 an oil has been examined by Umney and Bennett 1 ). The oil, 

 which in odour and appearance did not differ from the ordinary 

 French or Spanish oil, was probably also derived from Mentha 

 pulegium, but in its physical properties did not differ from American 

 pennyroyal oil either. Its constants were di 6 o 0,927; « D -(-35°; 

 content of pulegone 75% (boiling point 212 to 220 ); soluble in 

 2 vol. 70 per cent, alcohol. 



Fennel Oil. During this season we have again distilled here 

 large parcels of foreign fennel, and we only carry stocks of our own 

 distillate of exceptional quality, which owing to a very high anethol- 

 content already solidifies at -|- 6°. By abstracting a portion of the anethol 

 the oil can be cheapened, and for this reason the above solidifying 

 point should be insisted upon in placing orders. We recently examined 

 an oil which only solidified at -}- 1,7°, and from which consequently the 

 bulk of the anethol had been abstracted. 



The fennel grown on fields at Liitzen, only a few miles from our 

 own establishment, unfortunately cannot compete with fennel grown 

 abroad, the less so, as the new Tariff reasonably allows freedom of 

 duty to foreign seed for distillation. 



Reports received from Salonica state that the fennel harvest in 

 Macedonia in 1904 has given a yield of only 200000 kilos, which 

 in view of the harvest of 7000000 kilos of the year 1903 seems 

 hardly credible. 



With the view of increasing the knowledge of fennel oil, we 

 submitted, when distilling a large quantity Galician fennel, the first 

 fractions of this oil to a closer examination. The terpenes detected 

 up to the present in the low boiling portions of common fennel oil, 

 were pinene and dipentene 2 ). Tardy 3 ) claimed to have discovered 

 also phellandrene and cymene in an oil obtained from French bitter 

 cultivated fennel, but he failed to give the necessary proofs of this. 

 By our renewed examination we have detected camphene as a new 

 constituent of fennel oil, and have shown that the oil contains 

 a-phellandrene. Cymene, however, could not be detected. 



ff) Pharm. Journ. 75 (1905), 861; Chemist and Druggist 67 (1905), 970. 



2 ) Report April 1890, 20. 



3 ) Bull. Soc. Chim. III. 17 (1897), 660. 



