COMMERCIAL NOTES AND SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION. 67 
Lemongrass Oil. In spite of the briskness of the demand there has only been 
little change in the prices in India; they ranged with slight fluctuations between 21%/s 
to 21/4 d. p.oz., and were therefore a little below the quotations of last September. The 
production must therefore have been unusually large, for it is obvious that the per- 
fumery industry did not allow the opportunity of making cheap purchases to pass by. 
Buyers everywhere appear to have laid in plentiful supplies and it is therefore not 
beyond the range of possibility that in the course of the summer a further slight 
decline may manifest itself. 
The shipments from Cochin in the year 1913 have been as follows: — 
i Quantity 
Port of Destination 1912 1913 
Baneoten 9. Se 17 737,5 Ibs. 35541 Ibs. 
DeresnoOl ks — | 2235 5s 
SESS et al etag 2 pe ea aaa 54 450 5 | 50 '605;5:. =. 
BiapSCINESe No a 102452" °°. 140 431,5__,, 
Amsterdam . Arn ys — | 3019,5- ,, 
PIMBMUCE De. Pes he a — | 4 389 , 
BwctincE ee A ZAGAT jhe c| 8844 
= TTS TT a ae nes A8 246 ns 71 247 * 
LS i ec ge eee 23 826 . | 199485 _,, 
Total | 248880 Ibs. 343 249,5 Ibs. 
We would seize this opportunity to call attention once more to a matter which 
we first ventilated many years ago, but which nevertheless appears to have been lost 
sight of. In our view it is altogether out of harmony with the present-day tendency 
towards simplification of our commercial system to continue to quote by the “ounce” 
an article such as lemongrass oil, which during the past few decades has attained a 
previously undreamt-of commercial importance, and of which the annual production 
now exceeds a quarter of a million pounds. If the British Board of Trade, which 
may be regarded as the leading authority in questions of this kind, were to take steps 
that would result in the abolition of this out-of-date practice it would earn the general 
approval of those concerned. The same thing applies to palmarosa oil, although a 
few firms who take a leading part in the trade in this oil have already succeeded in 
bringing about some improvement by invariably calculating their offers in “lbs.”. Even 
although the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Empire may not be disposed 
to adopt the metric system, care should at least be taken not to render international 
traffic still more difficult by clinging to units of weight that are antiquated in the sense 
of being out of harmony with present-day needs. It should be possible to introduce 
in the lemongrass and palmarosa oil trade a practice which has been in existence in 
the citronella oil business for the past 25 years. 
From the Société des Plantations de Kaoéni in Marseilles we have received a 
sample of lemongrass oil distilled in the island of Mayotte. Its specific gravity was 
0,8933 (15°), opt. rot. — 0°23’, and, in common with other oils of the same origin 
previously referred to'), it belonged to the group of sparingly-soluble lemongrass oils, 
*) Report April 1913, 72; October 1913, 69. 
5* 
