Commercial notes and scientific information. 69 



Oil from the Berries of Juniperus phoenicea. An English periodical 1 ) 

 gives constants of an oil distilled in Cyprus from the berries of Juniperus phwnicea, 

 as follow: d 0,867, « D -f- 5°, n D25 o 1,4708. We ourselves many years ago described an 

 oil of which we obtained a yield of 1 p. c. from a variety of red juniper berries im- 

 ported by us from Smyrna. The characters of this sample were as follow: duo 0,859; 

 « D — 4° 55'-). 



Lavender Oil. Since the last crop the lavender oil market has only shown 

 slight fluctuations and during the winter the turnover has moved within moderate 

 limits. A number of producers have thought it advisable to withhold their lavender 

 oil from the market because, as a result of the familiar absurd stirring-up of popular 

 feeling against our firm, they had come to believe that an upward movement was 

 impending. In these expectations they have been severely disappointed. Apart from 

 this, a fair quantity of oil is available, and at times it is possible to buy below the 

 market-price when a speculator here or there is under the necessity of realising. If 

 the stagnation on the lavender oil trade should continue, it is to be expected that this 

 year a heavy stock of oil will have to be carried forward into the new season, and 

 this circumstance would of course weigh in determining the value of the present 

 year's oil. It is a well-known fact that for many seasons past the new oil has always 

 been looked forward to with great eagerness, as the previous year's output was 

 invariably used up to the last drop. 



It is to be regretted that the practice of adulterating lavender oil has lately assumed 

 what must be described as fearful dimensions. Our laboratory-books record a rich 

 selection of examples of more or less skilful adulteration. We strongly urge our 

 friends, in so far as they have covered their requirements by purchases made in the 

 South of France, to send samples of such parcels to us for examination. The services 

 of our laboratory are gratuitously at the disposal of our clients, and everyone who 

 avails himself of them renders an invaluable service, not only to himself, but first of 

 all to the trade at large. It is extremely difficult for a perfumer to detect adulterations 

 consisting of the addition of foreign esters, and it is precisely sophistications of this 

 kind that have recently been the order of the day. 



An article by one Marcel Provence, entitled "Les Allemands en Provence", appeared 

 last October in Les Quatre-Dauphins, a monthly review, and was reprinted in several 

 local papers in the South of France. Its object apparently was to stir up animosity 

 against our works at Barreme among the population of the lavender districts. We 

 would take no notice here of this attack, which is thoroughly characteristic of the 

 tactics of the French chauvinist press, were it not that we cannot bring ourselves to 

 deprive our readers altogether of this comic contribution — for as such every normally 

 constituted person, no matter what may be his nationality, will regard it. The author 

 depicts what he saw on the occasion of a visit which (without permission, by the way) 

 he paid to our factory at Barreme. He grows excited because the greater part of the 

 installation came from Germany. But the special object which provoked his indigna- 

 tion was a harmless ornament in the gable of the building, which owes its existence to 

 the fancy of our French architect, but in which this patriotic writer espies the likeness 

 of a German soldier's peaked helmet! But even this is not enough. The fact that 

 our peaceful little factory is only 25 metres distant from the railway should, he thinks, 

 afford grave cause of misgiving, for "strategic reasons". It is therefore obvious that 



>) Perfum. and Essent. Oil Record 3 (1912), 291. — 2 ) Report October 1895, 



