ON THE MORINGA PTERYGOSPERM A . 
43 
smell and taste, peculiarly adapts it to the purposes of the 
perfumer, who is able to make it the medium for arresting 
the flight of those highly volatile particles of essential oil, 
which constitute the aroma of many of the most odoriferous 
flowers, and cannot be obtained, by any other means, in a 
concentrated and permanent form. To effect this, the petals 
of the flowers, whose odour it is desired to obtain, are thinly 
spread over flakes of cotton wool saturated with this oil, 
and the whole enclosed in air-tight tin cases, where they 
are suffered to remain till they begin to wither, when they 
are replaced by fresh ones, and the process thus continued, 
till the oil has absorbed as much as was desired of the 
aroma ; it is then separated from the wool by pressure, and 
preserved, under the name of essence, in well-stopped 
bottles. By digesting the oil thus impregnated in alcohol, 
which does not take up the fixed oil, a solution of the aroma 
is effected in the spirit, and many odoriferous tinctures or 
waters, as they are somewhat inaccurately termed, prepared 
which could not otherwise be obtained. By this process 
most delicious perfumes might be obtained from the flowers 
of the Acacia tortuosa, Pancratium carribeum, Plumeria 
alba, Plumeria rubra, and innumerable other flowers of the 
most exquisite fragrance, which abound within the tropics, 
blooming unregarded, and wasting their odours on the 
barren air. Pharm. Journ. 
