best American brands, so that the tapping of Pinus excelsa should be encouraged as 
much as possible. It is hardly probable that turpentine oil from Pinus longifolia can 
take the place of the valuable American kinds, for, as we showed as far back as 1911, 
the former contains a large percentage of sylvestrene which lacks siccative properties’). 
It is therefore desirable that the superior oils obtained from Pinus Khasya, 
P. Merkusii and P. excelsa should be placed on the Indian market. 
The rosin of the various Indian, European and American pines showed great 
similarity. As in the distillation of turpentine from Pinus longifolia a fairly high tem- 
perature is necessary, the colophony of this kind is somewhat coloured. 
For the present turpentine oil produced in India seems to find sufficient demand 
in the country itself. It is largely used by the railway companies. Under the circum- 
stances exportation to Europe is hardly to be expected in the near future. 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES ON ESSENTIAL OILS. 7 AT 
So far it had been considered probable that the Japanese part of Saghalin might 
be looked to in future for the supply of turpentine oil’). According to an information 
published in the Chemiker-Zeitung*®) an excellent turpentine was produced there recently, 
but the idea of production on a large scale had to be abandoned because the trees 
that had been tapped for turpentine died already after the third tapping. 
About wood turpentine oil a few articles have again appeared which are dealt with 
in the following paragraphs. 
Lunn*) deems it unpractical to differentiate between so-called wood turpentines 
and rosins and gum turpentine and rosins. Wood turpentine oils themselves show 
very great divergences, according to whether they were obtained by steam distillation 
of the waste wood, or by dry distillation. The oils obtained in the latter way often 
possess properties which differ very materially from those of gum turpentine oils. In 
Lunn’s opinion a good gum turpentine oil can be distinguished from a good steam- 
distilled wood turpentine oil by its odour only. In two oils examined by him the 
physical properties were practically identical. He found the following values: in a 
gum turpentine oil: dis,30. 0,866; flash point (Abel cup) 88°, and 97 p.c. consituents 
boiling below 180°; in a wood turpentine oil obtained by steam-distillation: d15,30 0,863; 
flash point (Abel cup) 91°; 95 p.c. of constituents boiling below 180°. 
We have also to report upon a paper by M. Adams and C. Hilton®) on wood 
distillation under reduced pressure. The authors consider ordinary dry distillation under 
reduced pressure, if under close supervision of temperature so as to avoid overheating, 
the most suitable way for working up waste wood. When experimenting with wood 
from the western yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa) the temperature of the sulphuric acid 
bath was not more than 5° higher than the temperature in the actual distilling still. 
At 94° (645 mm.) water passed over and turpentine oil commenced to distil too. The 
temperature was maintained at 160° for a few hours, the wood becoming brown; 
above this temperature the material decomposed and at 220° gases made their appear- 
ance as decomposition products. In an apparatus specially built for the purpose, a 
description of which, along with an illustration, is given in the original treatise, the 
authors carried out an experiment with larger quantities of the raw material. By 
their examinations they believe to have proved that the pines occurring in the western 
1) Comp. Report April 1911, 116; October 1911, 93. — 7%) Comp. Report April 1918, 104. — 8) Chem. 
Zig. 38 (1914), 1054. — *) Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter 85 (1914), No. 16, p.36. — 5) Journ. Ind. Eng. 
Chemistry 6 (1914), 378. : 
