Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
November,  1902.  J 
Colognes  and  Toilet  Waters. 
56i 
Moreover,  it  is  not  a  necessity  in  these  toilet  accessories,  either  as  a 
blending  or  as  a  fixing  agent.  Its  place  is  better  supplied  by  benzoin 
for  both  purposes. 
Only  the  best  variety  of  benzoin — that  known  as  Siam  or  vanilla 
benzoin — is  suitable  for  this  use.  It  costs  five  or  six  times  as  much 
as  the  Sumatra  or  marble  benzoin,  but  the  latter  has  a  pungent  and 
coarse  quality,  and  lacks  fragrance.  The  best  Siam  benzoin  is  less 
expensive  than  musk.  It  is  best  employed  in  tincture  made  of  the 
strength  and  by  the  method  of  the  Pharmacopoeia. 
formulas. 
There  is  so  much  difference  in  individual  tastes  and  in  the  demands 
of  cost  that  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  any  single  formula  for  a 
class  of  odors  will  be  accepted  as  ideal,  or  any  set  of  formulas 
regarded  as  complete. 
There  is  no  law  in  perfumery,  but  a  few  general  considerations 
may  be  made  regarding  formulas  tor  toilet  waters,  which  will  apply 
in  most  cases,  if  not  rigidly  interpreted. 
Every  toilet  water,  like  a  handkerchief  perfume,  should  have  a 
distinctive  odor  or  quality.  This  is  best  secured  by  means  of  a  few 
ingredients,  carefully  selected  and  of  the  best  quality.  A  formula 
which  contains  a  dozen  or  so  of  ingredients  usually  means  either 
that  the  author  employed  poor  oils  and  sought  to  cover  the  bad 
qualities  of  each  by  a  liberal  variety  of  qualifying  oils,  or  that  he 
made  mistakes  in  his  first  selection  for  a  desired  blend  and  sought 
to  correct  them  in  the  same  way.  The  simplest  formulas  are  usu- 
ally the  best,  so  long  as  they  contain  the  essentials.  But  they  em- 
phatically demand  good  materials. 
This  does  not  mean  that  one  must  pay  the  highest  prices  and 
secure  the  fanciest  brands  invariably,  but  only  that  a  good  quality, 
which  can  be  secured  only  at  a  suitable  price,  is  the  cheapest  in 
the  end. 
The  quality  of  the  oils  is  of  more  consequence  than  the  quality  of 
the  alcohol.  A  lot  of  nonsense  has  been  written  about  the  necessity 
of  extreme  care  in  the  selection  of  alcohol  for  perfumes,  such  as  cer- 
tain kinds  requiring  alcohol  made  from  grapes,  and  others  demand- 
ing extreme  purification,  etc.  A  reasonable  attention  to  a  good 
quality  of  alcohol,  even  at  a  slight  increase  in  cost,  will  always  pay, 
but  other  things  being  equal,  a  good  quality  of  oils  in  a  poor  quality 
