April 19, 1873.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
825 
properly examined when dried. An investigation of 
a fresh specimen would he interesting. A dried spe¬ 
cimen affords a good subject wherewith to test the 
progress of a student. Magenta-stained sections are 
the most useful. Transverse sections unstained show 
but little. Radial sections are at once the most 
difficult to make and the most valuable. The ab¬ 
sence of the bark from the Pharmacopoeia, and the 
impossibility of studying it in dried specimens, are 
sufficient excuses for treating it with greater brevity 
than its interest structurally warrants. 
The Cinchonas and a new candidate or two for 
pharmaceutical favour now only remain of the barks. 
Of the Cinchonas Mr. Howard has written so ex¬ 
haustively that little remains to be said, save only 
from the microspectroscopic point of view. I shall 
therefore restrict myself to saying just enough to 
place before my readers the salient features of Cin¬ 
chona structure, and to noting a few points of interest 
arising out of a spectroscopic examination of the 
colouring-matters of the bark, this latter serving as 
an introduction to the more serious microspectro¬ 
scopic investigation of the coloriferous woods that 
will shortly engage our attention. Before touching 
the Cinchonas, however, I will say a little about the 
new candidate, and perhaps their some-day rival, 
Eucalyptus globulus , for very fine specimens of the 
bark and leaves of which plant I am indebted to the 
liberality of Messrs. Savory and Moore. 
PERFUMES PHYSIOLOGICALLY AND 
COMMERCIALLY CONSIDERED.* 
BY JAMES PATON. 
Assistant Keeper , Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. 
( Concluded, from p. 805.) 
Among animal perfumes, which are limited to three, 
musk deserves, from its importance, the first notice. 
Musk is secreted in a small follicle or pouch, termed in 
commerce a pod, which is found between the navel and 
the preputial orifice of the adult male alone of a small 
species of deer, Moschus moschiferus. The creature is noc¬ 
turnal in its habits, exceedingly timid and fleet of foot, 
-and therefore very difficult to stalk, if we may use such 
an expression. The animal is about the size of a .grey¬ 
hound, is hornless, and has two projecting canine tusk¬ 
like teeth developed in the upper jaw. The musk deer 
is very widely distributed in the mountainous regions of 
Central Asia, going northward from the slopes of the 
Himalayas, over the new kingdom of Kashgaria, and 
stretching even into Asiatic Russia, the length of Lake 
Baikal, and the course of the Yeniseisk. To the east it 
is found in the hilly regions of Assam and in the Chinese 
province of Sechuen, from which the finest qualities of 
musk are imported. Col. Markham, in his ‘Journal of 
Sporting Adventure and Travels in Chinese Tartary and 
Thibet,’ says :—“ The musk, which is much better known 
than the deer itself, is only found in adult males ; the 
females having none, neither has any portion of their bodies 
the slightest odour of musk. The dung of the males 
smells nearly as strong as musk ; but, singularly enough, 
neither in the contents of the stomach nor bladder, nor in 
any other part of the body, is there any perceptible scent 
of musk. The pod .which is placed near the navel, and 
between the flesh and skin, is composed of several layers 
of thin skin, in which the musk is confined, and has much 
the appearance of the craw or stomach of a partridge when 
full of food. There is an orifice outward through the 
* Read at a meeting of the North British Branch of the 
Pharmaceutical Society, March 28, 1873. 
skin, into which, by a slight pressure, the little finger will 
pass ; but it has no connection whatever with the body. 
It is probable that musk is at times discharged through 
this orifice, as the pod is often found not half full, and 
sometimes even nearly void. The musk itself is in grains 
from the size of a small bullet to small shot. In autumn 
and winter the grains are firm, hard, and nearly dry ; but 
in summer they become damp and soft. For two years 
after the birth of the animal the contents of the pod re¬ 
main a soft milky substance, with a disagreeable smell. 
When it first becomes musk there is not much more than 
the eighth of an ounce. Though not so strong, the musk 
of young animals has a much pleasanter smell than that 
of old ones ; but difference of food, climate, and situation, 
as far as my experience goes, does not at all affect the 
quality. ... In many respects they are not unlike hares 
in their habits and economy. Each individual selects 
some particular spot for its favourite retreat, about which 
it remains still and at rest throughout the day, leaving it 
in the evening to search for food or to wander about, 
returning soon after daylight. They will occasionally 
rest for the day in any place where they may happen to 
be in the morning, but in general they return to near the 
same spot almost every day, making forms in different 
quarters of their retreat a little from each other, and 
visiting them in turn. . . . They seldom, if ever, lie in the 
sun, even in the coldest weather, and their forms are 
always^ made where there is something to shelter them 
from its rays. Towards evening they begin to move, and 
during the night they appear to wander about a good deal 
from top to bottom of the hill, or from one side to another. 
Their nocturnal rambles are apparently as much for re¬ 
creation as in search of food, as they often visit regularly 
some steep ledge of rock or precipice, where there is little 
or no vegetation. The Puharries believe that they come 
to such places to play and dance with each other, and 
often set their snares along the edge of such a ledge or 
precipice in preference to the forest. In most of the hill 
states the musk deer is considered as royal property. In 
some the Rajahs keep men purposely to hunt it, and in 
Gurwhal a fine is imposed upon any Puharrie who is 
known to have sold a musk-pod to a stranger. In 
some districts they are hunted down with dogs, but 
snaring is by far the most common method practised for 
their capture ; a few are occasionally shot by the village 
shikarries when in pursuit of other animals, but the 
match-lock is seldom taken out purposely to hunt musk 
deer, for a hill shikarrie does not carry the match lighted, 
and the deer being generally come upon face to face, 
almost every one would get away before he could strike a 
light and apply it to the match.” 
Three kinds of musk find their way into the English 
market, the first of which, Kabardeen, or Russian musk, 
comes to us from Siberia through Russia. It is of a very 
inferior quality, being poor in odour, and is said to be the 
produce of a different species from the Himalayan musk 
deer, called Moschus Sibiricus. The pods are large, and 
usually are to be depended on as to genuineness, which is 
much more than can be said for the pods we import in 
caddies from China. The Chinese musk generally is 
valued at from four to six times as much as the Russian, 
and in buying this very dear substance the purchaser 
would require to beware of bargaining for a pig in a poke. 
It is frequently adulterated with baked blood, dried liver, 
bark, pellets of lead, etc., to such an extent that only the 
smell of the orginal tenant remains in the pod. The per¬ 
fumers further distinguish Assam musk from the Chinese 
or Tonquin musk, by its possession of a much more rank 
smell than that imported from China. Regarding the 
musk of the Western Himalayas, I find the following note 
in the catalogue of the Agra Exhibition of 1867 :—“The 
Simla musk balls, which are presented as complimentary 
nazars by hill chiefs, are an inferior kind, and do not com¬ 
mand anything like the price of the genuine Thibet balls. 
About 100 musk bags are imported from Changthan rid 
Yarkand, of which about forty go to Yarkand ; the rest 
