Commercial and scientific notes on essential oils. 



Commercial Notes and Scientific Information 

 on Essential Oils. 



Almond Oil, bitter. — The formula (I) of a mandelo-nitrileglucoside, which is now 

 accepted for the constitution of amygdalin, may be considered as well established. 

 Attempts made to separate the disaccharide as such from the mandelic acid nitrile 

 residue had in general merely led to the splitting of the glucoside into glucose and 

 mandelic acid nitrile glucoside. Only recently Giaja 1 ) succeeded, by means of enzymes 

 from the intestines of snails, in decomposing amygdalin directly into mandelic acid 

 nitrile and a disaccharide. Little is known concerning the nature of this disaccharide 

 which is supposed to be of the trehalose type and which does not reduce Fehling's 

 solution. The assumption of E. Fischer, that this sugar was maltose or a very similar 

 disaccharide, is not confirmed by the observations of Caldwell and Courtauld 2 ), 

 H. ter Meulen 3 ) and A. Bau 4 ). 



P. Karrer, C. Nageli and L. Lang 5 ) have recently attempted to decide whether the 

 amygdalin-disaccharide might possibly be cellobiose; they have been able to disprove 

 this assumption. Not succeeding in the originally-intended synthesis of mandelo-nitrile- 

 celloside, they prepared on the one hand, hepta-acetyl cellosido-mandelic acid (II, in 

 crystals of m. p. 179 to 182°; [«] D — 44°) from inactive silver mandelate and aceto- 

 bromocellobiose, and on the other hand from amygdalin, hepta-acetyl amygdalinic acid 

 (amorphous, m. p. uncertain between 60 and 100°; [«] D + 21°). Since these two bodies, 

 which were both hydrolysed by emulsin and were hence of glucoside character, were 

 totally different from one another, it followed, that amygdalinic acid is not identical 

 with cellosido-mandelic acid, and that the sugar of amygdalin cannot be a cellobiose. 



C 6 rVC^-0 — C 12 H 21 O n C 6 rVO~0— — Ci 2 H 14 O n (COCH 3 ), 



X CN XTOOH 



(I) Amygdalin. (II) Heptacetyl-cellosido-mandelic acid. 



As regards Spanish bitter almond oils, see page 78 of this Report. 



Alpine Rose Oil. — From young, air-dried shoots (125 g.) of the alpine rose, 

 Rhododendron ferrugineum.L., which came from the Italian Alps (LaMadone des Fenetres) , 

 Roure-Bertrand Fils 6 ) prepared by extraction with petrolether and subsequent distillation 

 0.22 g. = 0.17 percent, of essential oil; the light-green product of aromatic scent had 

 the following properties:— di 5 o 0.8^0, almost insoluble in alcohol of 90 per cent.; 

 acid v. 0, sap. v. 63.47 7 ). 



l ) Compt. rend. 150 (1910), 793. — 2 ) Journ. chem. Soc. 91 (1907), 666, 671. — 3 ) Recueil trav. chim. des 

 }'.-h. 24 (1905), 461. — *) Cf. Report 1917, 3. — B ) Helvet. chim. acta 3 (1920), 573. — 6 ) Bull. Roure- 

 Vertrawl Fils, April 1920, 34. — 7 ) Cf. Gildemeister and Hoffmann, The Volatile' Oils, 2" d ed., vol. Ill, p. 3S4. 



