Commercial and scientific notes on essential oils. 13 



The chief shipping place is Macassar, the official statistics of which port show the 

 considerable fluctuations of the last years. 

 The shipments were: — 



1914 381 cases or baskets 1918 624 cases or baskets 



1915 4481 „ ;, „ 1919 2802 „ „ 



1916 3359 „ „ „ 1920 1324 „ 



1917 1546 „ „ „ 1921 1805 „ „ „ . 



The investigation of a cajuput oil, sent us for the purpose, showed once again 

 very clearly that the constants alone are not always a safe criterion for the quality 

 of the oil. Specific gravity, rotatory power and solubility were altogether normal 

 (di 5 o 0.9209, « D — 0°36', soluble in 1 vol. and more of 80 per cent, alcohol) but the 

 odour proved that the product consisted chiefly of a camphor oil fraction containing 

 cineole, which had been adjusted to the constants of cajuput oil. The camphor-like 

 odour was so unmistakable that a special chemical proof was not required. 



A great lack of moral sense is required to place such stuff on the market and this 

 case shows again how necessary it is to buy only from reliable firms. 



Camphor Oil. — The exports of camphor oil from Japan, after a considerable rise 

 in 1920, decreased very much in 1921. In the years from 1919 to 1921, they were as 

 follows 1 ):- 1919 ^ ^ 10306 piculs to the value of 333785 yen , 



1920 ... . 23424 „ „ „ „ „ 841508 „ 



1921 .... 8056 „ „ „. „ „ 167256 „ . 



An extensive article in the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute*) on the "Present 

 position of the camphor industry" deals with the history and the prospects of camphor 

 production in China, Japan and Formosa. In addition the cultivation of the camphor 

 tree in Italy, Algeria, South Africa, West Usambara, America, the West Indies, Buenos 

 Aires, Burma, the Nilgiris, the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, Queens- 

 land, Ceylon, Madagascar, Mauritius and the Canaries is discussed with more or less 

 details. As our readers will already be fairly well acquainted with the subject, we only 

 extract from the article what can serve as a completion of our previous communications. 



Formerly, camphor came to Europe almost entirely in the crude state, from China, 

 Formosa, or Japan, the process of refining being a Dutch secret at the close of the 

 seventeenth century and afterwards a Venetian monopoly, but more recently carried 

 out in England, Hamburg, Paris, New York and Philadelphia, as well as in Japan. - 

 1912 it was estimated that 70 per cent, of the world's consumption of camphor 3 ) — 

 then 11000000 lbs. — was used for the manufacture of celluloid. Since then, the rapid 

 increase of the cinematograph industry has led to a greatly enlarged demand for it as 

 a material for the manufacture of films and similar products, such as xylonite. The 

 total amount of camphor taken by Europe and the United States in 1914 is said to 

 have been 12000000 lbs. 



The Chinese export of camphor in 1891 (before the cession of Formosa) was 

 17000 piculs (over 2250000 lbs.), and, according to a Chinese authority, the province 

 of Fukien alone had in 1905 more camphor trees than Formosa. Between 1903 and 

 1907, the province was overrun by Japanese employes and, according to the Chinese 



*) Chemist and Druggist 96 (1922), 468. — 2 ) Bull. Imp. Inst. 18 (1920), 524. — 3 ) It is supposed that 

 in the ten first years of this century 7 to 10 million lbs. were consumed annually, on an average, in the whole 

 world, as compared with 17 million lbs. in 1916, 12 million lbs. in 1917 and 10 million lbs. in 1913. 



