LIST OF PERFUMES, ETC., AND PLANTS WHICH AFFORD THEM. 158 
the day when the great Creator gave - ] food for the cattle 
and “ herb for the service of man ” the perfume-distilling leaves 
have been with us as they will be with us in joy and in sorrow, 
in life, in love, and in death, to the end of time. 
ABC LIST OF PERFUMES, ESSENTIAL OILS, &c., 
AND PLANTS WHICH AFFORD THEM. 
“ The breath of flowers is far sweeter upon the air where it conies and 
goes like the warbling of music than in the hand; therefore nothing is 
more fit for that delight than to know something of the flowers that do best 
perfume the air .”—Lord Bacon. 
Accobding to Dr. Piesse, the six plants grown most extensively 
for perfume are Jasmine, Acacia, Roses, Bergamot, Orange 
Violet, and the Tuberose. 
This list does not profess to be complete, since nearly every 
plant that grows has odour or fragrance of some sort or other, 
however slight it may be. Even species and varieties of the 
same species vary very much in odour, as is abundantly proved 
by species of, say, Dendrobium, Reseda, or Diosma, and by 
varieties of H.P. or Tea-scented Roses, Apples, Pears, or Sweet 
Oranges, no two varieties smelling or tasting precisely alike. 
This is even true sometimes of individual fruits off the same 
tree. All that is here attemped is to give a bird’s-eye view of 
the plants most generally grown for fragrance, and especially of 
those having sweet-scented leaves as well as flowers. 
The growth or evolution of the perfumer’s art began in Egypt 
and Greece, having probably come thence from the East. From 
Greece it naturally came to Rome, and thence to France long 
before it reached our own shores. 
The master perfumers of Paris received a charter from 
Philip Augustus of France in 1190, but the trade scarcely began 
in England until the time of Elizabeth; and even so late as 18G0 
there were only forty manufacturing perfumers in all England, 
while at the same date there were eighty in Paris alone. There 
does not appear ever to have been a perfumers’ company in 
London. No such trade as that of a perfumer was known in 
Scotland until after the year 1763. 
