AmAS'i9Pioarm  }     Cardamom  and  Oil  of  Cardamom.  169 
the  present  communication  is  to  submit  to  the  Committee  on  N.F. 
an  abstract  of  the  information  thus  obtained  and  the  conclusions 
which  I  believe  are  warranted  from  these  and  my  own  observations. 
"  The  official  Malabar  and  Madras  cardamoms  are,  on  account  of 
their  high  price,  hardly  ever  used  for  the  distillation  of  the  commer- 
cial oil  which  is  generally  made  from  Ceylon  cardamoms.  Also  this 
oil  is  rather  high  in  price  and  would,  therefore,  never  be  used  in 
larger  quantities,  so  that  the  demand  could  probably  be  filled  without 
difficulty.  The  keeping  qualities  of  the  oil  are  comparable  to  those 
of  oil  of  lemon,  orange,  etc. 
"  The  available  data  for  testing  the  purity  of  the  oil  are  somewhat 
meagre,  and  from  what  I  suppose  to  be  its  chemical  composition 
it  would  seem  to  be  not  very  difficult  to  adulterate  it  without  altering 
its  various  characteristics.  Altogether,  I  would  consider  it  as  an 
article  which  does  not  lend  itself  well  to  official  recognition." — 
Fritzsche  Brothers. 
"  I  am  extremely  friendly  to  the  article — oil  cardamom — knowing 
its  value  and  worth  as  a  flavoring  ingredient. 
"  Purity. — This  oil  is  one  that  is  susceptible  to  adulteration,  and 
an  oil  that  has  suffered  tremendously  in  the  past.  We  believe,  how- 
ever, that,  along  with  other  oils  of  this  character,  the  standard  has 
been  raised  considerably  of  late  ;  and  at  the  present  time  there  is 
no  difficulty  in  securing  an  oil  as  an  article  of  commerce  that  can 
be  officially  recognized. 
"  Distillation. — There  are  several  qualities  of  cardamom  seed  dis- 
tilled, but  the  oils  that  are  in  most  general  use  are  drawn  from  the 
Ceylon  and  Malabar  seed,  both  yielding  a  slightly  different  quality 
of  oil ;  and  in  recognizing  oil  of  cardamom,  these  conditions  should 
be  considered.  We  refer  you  to  Parry  and  Gildemeister  and  Hoff- 
mann, who  have  both  analyzed  these  oils  on  a  number  of  occasions, 
and  our  own  laboratory  has  looked  into  same  frequently. 
"Keeping  Qualities. — In  our  opinion,  from  the  experience  we 
have  had  with  this  article,  the  keeping  qualities  are  much  greater 
than  that  of  the  oil  you  mention.  It  is  not  prone  to  become  tere- 
binthinate  and  if  kept  under  the  ideal  conditions  that  essential  oils 
should  be  stored  we  believe  it  will  retain  its  qualities  for  an  indefinite 
period. 
"  Physical  Character. — This  is  easily  established  and  any  prac- 
