24 
HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 
“The spectacle of a graceful young girl, surrounded by a 
battery of chemical appliances, and explaining, with the fa¬ 
miliarity of an elderly savant, the valuable results of laboratory 
researches among plants strictly as related to commercial uses, 
was interesting from more than one point of view. All the other 
girl-students — and Philadelphia has a number — who are 
engaged in original research in various departments of science 
must take courage from Miss Abbott’s success and her enthu¬ 
siasm. When she tells us that we shall some day have bottled 
up for purchase as perfumes, the delicate aroma of the buck¬ 
wheat cake, the delicious fragrance of birch, hickory, and 
other trees, and the elusive scents that now fill the spring air 
in woodland, meadow, and the farmer’s fields, it will be seen 
how fascinating is the subject, and how it may be expanded 
from the rose and violet culture of the south of France, and be¬ 
yond the orange and lemon laboratories that give us now such 
rich fragrance and flavors. 
“When Miss Abbott prophesies that the wax in the sugar- 
canes, now only an impediment in sugar processes, will one 
day be made an article of commercial supply, when she points 
to the paper made from sorghum canes, and to the pretty pink 
specimens obtained from the familiar yucca plant, as witness 
of the great magazine in the cellulose of plants, her hearers are 
charmed by the practical vision. 
“In a range of tall glasses, like organ tubes, on one table 
were shown the various tints of the familiar logwood and mad¬ 
der dyes, and in other tubes the new haematoxylon, — the dis¬ 
covery made by the lecturer of the same coloring principle in 
another plant hitherto held innocent of this mercantile im¬ 
portance. The new gum, which can be made to replace the 
now lessening supplies of gum arabic, was shown among the 
glass jars of the exhibit. A variety of sugars was also exhibited, 
and some of the processes of making beet and sorghum sugars 
illustrated by the camera on the screen. 
“But a greater charm than was in the subject even, was in 
the clue all these demonstrations and the elaborate prepara¬ 
tions for illustrating the lecture, gave to the energy, the com¬ 
mand of resources, and the skilled industry of this young lady. 
