196 
The  Chinese  Musk  Industry. 
(Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
»      March,  1918. 
Musk  is  a  secretion  of  the  male  musk  deer.  Three  kinds  of 
musk  are  distinguished  in  commerce,  the  most  important  and  val- 
uable being  the  Chinese  or  Tongkin  musk,  imported  principally  from 
Shanghai.  It  is  put  up  in  small  tin-lined,  silk-covered  caddies,  each 
containing  from  two  to  three  dozen  pods.  These  are  generally  adul- 
terated with  dried  blood,  fragments  of  leather,  leaden  pellets,  peas, 
etc.,  so  that  often  little  more  than  the  smell  of  the  original  tenant 
of  the  pod  remains.  The  Chinese  pods  vary  greatly  in  value  accord- 
ing to  quality  and  genuineness.  Some  musk  collected  from  the  west- 
ern Himalaya  is  exported  from  India.  It  is  much  less  prized  than 
genuine  Tongkin  musk.  The  third  variety,  known  as  Kabardine,  or 
Siberian  musk,  is  exported  from  Central  Asia  by  way  of  Russia.  It 
is  in  large  pods,  said  to  be  yielded  by  a  distinct  species  of  deer,  and 
is  very  inferior  in  point  of  odor. 
Good  musk  is  of  a  dark  purplish  color,  dry,  smooth,  and  unctuous 
to  the  touch  and  bitter  in  taste.  A  grain  of  musk  will  distinctly 
scent  millions  of  cubic  feet  of  air  without  any  appreciable  loss  of 
weight,  and  its  scent  is  not  only  more  penetrating  but  more  per- 
sistent than  that  of  any  other  known  substance.  As  a  material  in 
perfumery  it  is  of  the  first  importance,  its  powerful  and  enduring 
odor  giving  strength  and  permanency  to  the  vegetable  essences,  so 
that  it  is  a  principal  ingredient  in  nearly  all  compounded  perfumes. 
Musk,  or  some  substance  possessed  of  the  musk  odor,  is  also  con- 
tained in  glands  in  the  jaw  of  alligators  and  crocodiles,  whence  it 
has  been  extracted  for  use  in  perfumery  in  India  and  Egypt.  The 
musk  ox  and  the  muskrat  (Indian  and  European)  are,  as  their 
names  indicate,  remarkable  for  a  musk  odor.  The  musk  deer  differs 
from  the  typical  members  of  the  deer  family  and  stands  by  itself  as 
an  isolated  zoological  form,  as  both  sexes  are  entirely  devoid  of 
any  sort  of  frontal  appendage  and  the  upper  canine  teeth  of  the 
males  are  remarkably  developed — long,  slender,  sharp-pointed,  and 
gently  curved,  projecting  downward  out  of  the  mouth  with  the  ends 
turned  somewhat  backward.  Among  the  anatomical  peculiarities  in 
which  it  differs  from  all  true  deer  is  the  presence  of  a  gall-bladder. 
The  musk  deer  has  a  wide  distribution  over  the  highlands  of 
central  and  eastern  Asia,  including  the  greater  part  of  southern 
Siberia,  and  extends  to  Kashmir  on  the  southwest  and  Cochin  China 
on  the  southeast,  always,  however,  at  great  elevations — being  rarely 
found  in  summer  below  800  feet  above  the  sea  level,  and  ranging  as 
