Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-07-01
Facts About Perfumes.
Boston transcript.

"Choice perfumes may be considered as
belonging to three classes-the so called
bouquet perfumes, those that are the
simple Odors of flowers whose names they
bear, and those that by delicate art employ
such combinations and blendings as of
various odOrs as together stimulate per-
fectly the fume of some particular flower,
the real odor of which is so evanescent
and delicate that it can not be caught and
fixed by any process yet known to science.
Of the first of these, the representative
one that most readily occurs to my mind
at present is the 'Edenia' that [ have al
ready mentioned among the classes. The
inventor of that perfume was no less than
nine years In bringing it to perfection,
and when it was done he was so Justly en-
thusiastic over it that he declared that in
it art was glOrifed and nature ecIipsed.
All these bouquet perfumes are made by
various blendings of the result of the en-
feurage process-the extracted odors of
violet, jasmin, tuberose, rose, orange
flower, and cassie together
with musk, oil of rose, oil of ylang -ylang
and ambergris as a fxateur. One or an
other of those may be left out Of a special
blending, but this is the open field for
selection. The enfeurage process con-
spread on glass frames, to the presence
of the flowers, until it has taken their
Odor from them. That is done by manu-
facturers in the valley of the Var, in the
south of France, where vast fields of
sweet-smelling flowers are grown for this
purpose. Alcohol afterward takes up all
the perfume from the grease, and the
perfEmed alcohol is what is used in max
IrC q VT hn foil
the grease form that the perfumes are
imported to this country. Other fixateurs
than that which Ihave mentioned are en-
ployed, such as gum benzoin and gum
tOlu. The province of ambergris is to
blend and develop perfumes, to give them
a hOmOgeneity, as it were. It's natural
smell is not pleasant, being more like a
damp cellar than anything else. It is
found III the spermaceti whale, is an in
dicatiOn of an abnormal and unhealthy
condition of that creature, and is suppos-
ed to be product of indigestion. Never
theless it is a requisite for the perfumer,
and nothing else can take it place.
DOUBTLESS the incest art of the per-
fumeries is shown in the perfect simula-
ton of the OdOrs of certain flowers, the
real perfume of which can not be caught.
| Such flower, for instance, is the lily of
the valley; yet here is perfume named
after that flower, the entrancingly sweet
Odor of which is the perfect reproduction
of natures work, SO far as the smell goes.
! The reproduction of such a stimulant
| perfume is sometimes the work of years.
1t can only be carried on when the flowers
themselves are in perfection for purposes
of comparison, for a scent can no more
be accurately remembered than it can be
analysed. And even when the time is
propitious the artist compounder must
lay aside his work for days together, be-
| cause his olfactories grow weary. tempo
rarily vitiated and unreliable. Two of
our most delightfully."- sweet flowers that
grow upon our continent, the magnolia
and the tea olive of Georgia and Alabama,
have never yet been perfectly simulated
in perfume, though they have been the
subjects of almost countless experiments.
Again and again the exact odors have
been caught and lost again the moment
that the necessary fxateurs for retaining
them were added to the alcoholic COM
pounds. Of course they will be won some
day, but when they do they will have been
well earned