PERFUMES: THEIR SOURCE AND EXTRACTION. 



133 



needs naturally very careful selection. It is, as a rule, a mixture of 

 pork and beef fat, most carefully purified, the proportions of these two 

 fats being varied according to the nature of the flowers for which they are 

 employed. 



Maceration (Warm). 



Process No. 8 — namely, extraction by a fat maceration at a fair 

 temperature — is the one that is resorted to on the largest scale in the 

 factories at Grasse. Nothing, I conceive, is more astounding to the 

 visitor to one of the large factories than to walk over beds of plucked 

 violets ready to be placed in the warm melted fat in which they are 

 infused. Flowers are added to the melted fat from time to time, and 

 expression of the fat from the flowers is carried oat by means of a series 

 of hydraulic presses. The macerating vessels, as will be seen by the 

 illustration (fig. 33), consist of a series of copper vessels enclosed'in jacketed 

 steam pans, which can, of course, be heated to any desired temperature, 

 and the heat maintained or diminished as may be required. 



Extraction with Volatile Solvent. 



More recently, the fourth process referred to has been introduced, 

 and the extraction by volatile solvents is being employed at some of the 

 more up-to-date of the factories of Grasse. 



Petroleum-ether is an extremely powerful solvent of oily matter, and, 

 being highly volatile, can, under certain conditions, be dissipated from the 

 body that it has extracted without the necessity of raising the body to 

 such a temperature as will cause decomposition of the most delicate odorous 

 bodies. 



I might also refer to extraction by alcohol in connection with the 

 removal of the odour from the fats (pomades) rather than from the 

 actual extraction of flowers direct by alcohol. Alcohol is rarely employed 

 for direct extraction, as the boiling-point is a little too high for con- 

 venient dissipation. Fig. 34 is an illustration of the ingenious form of 

 machinery used for the extraction of the odour from pomades. The 

 mechanism is simple, yet in every sense efiective, and the arrangements 

 made for conducting the process in well-clasped cylinders enable the 

 process to be carried out with very little loss of alcohol — a not unim- 

 portant consideration in this country, where the alcohol used for 

 perfumery is worth 195. per gallon, of which practically 18s. is duty. 



Expression from Peels &c. 



The process of expression described as No. 5 is that used for the 

 obtaining of the volatile oil from the peel of lemon, orange, bergamot, 

 and other species of Citrus. 



Whoever has paid a visit to the famous and romantic island of Sicily 

 could not but admire the vast orchards of lemon trees stretching all the 

 way from Syracuse to Messina, and thence along the north shore to 

 Palermo, covering miles and miles of territory. In fact these extensive 

 groves of lemon trees represent one of the principal factors of wealth of 

 this fortunate island. 



