— 9° — 



Rosemary Oil. The French oil is greatly neglected although 

 the cheap prices ought really to stimulate interest in this article. The 

 requirements which we put to the quality when purchasing the oil 

 are so high, that we cannot too strongly recommend our goods to 

 the perfumery trade as being without rival. On the other hand, pure 

 Dalmatian oil is also one of our specialities, and this oil enjoys every- 

 where an appreciation which is all the greater, as owing to the severe 

 competition the trade in this oil, which is so completely a victim of 

 adulteration, is carried on by numerous firms in our branch only as 

 a very subordinate business. 



Sage Oil. In Gildemeister and Hoffmann's work The 

 Volatile Oils, under the description of oil of sage (p. 613) it is 

 stated inter alia that the saponification number determined in one oil 

 was 107 !). 



Contrary to this, E. J. Parry 2 ) mentions that in 12 sage oils 

 received from Spain he has observed ester numbers of only 18 to 39. 

 Specific gravity and rotatory power also lay partly outside the limits 

 of value given for oil of sage (di 5 o 0,915 to 0,925; && -}-io to -{-25 ) 

 and came to between 0,903 and 0,927 (15 ) and -|~7 and -f-25 

 respectively. 



In so far as Parry's figures have reference to the saponification 

 number, they agree with the observations which we also have sub- 

 sequently made with oil of sage. Both in oils received by us from 

 Dalmatia, and in our own distillates, we have found that sage 

 has oil a very low saponification number, the values ascertained 

 by us lying between 6 and 18. This, consequently, also applies to 

 the Dalmatian oils to which the above-mentioned work exclusively 

 refers. 



It is not surprising that the Spanish oils examined by Parry also 

 showed further differences, as these oils, according to their entire 

 composition, behave more like rosemary oils than like the ordinary Dal- 

 matian sage oil. We consider it very probable that the Spanish oil 

 is not obtained from Salvia officinalis L., but from another species 

 of salvia. 



Sandalwood Oil, East Indian. Only after the closing of our 

 October Report, we received further details by mail on the quantities 

 of wood put up for sale by the Government, and the dates of the 

 auctions, and these particulars may follow here by way of supplementary 

 information. 



x ) This was the only determination of the saponification number of sage oil 

 which was available at the time of the publication of this work. 

 2 ) Chemist and Druggist 70 (1907), 263. 



