The Art of Perfumery, and Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants

We believe that we are able to speak with certainty that flowers with a rose-red, violet, or blue color, owe their coloration to one and the same substance, but which is modified in various ways by the influence of the juices of plants. Scarlet-red flowers also contain cyanine reddened by an acid, but in such cases this substance is mixed with a yellow coloring matter which we will now describe. Yellow Coloring Matter.--The simplest experiments show that no analogy exists between the substance which colors flowers yellow and that of which we have already spoken. The agents which generate so easily with cyanine, the rose-red, violet, or green coloration, cannot in any case impart these colors to the yellow substance obtained from flowers. By the examination of the various yellow-colored flowers, we have ascertained that they owe their coloration to two substances, which differ from one another in their properties, and appear not to be derived from the same independent principle. One is completely insoluble in water, which we have termed xanthine, a name which Runge has given to a yellow matter from madder. As this name has not been accepted in science, we have employed it to denote one of the coloring matters of yellow flowers. The other substance is very soluble in water, and is by us termed xantheine. Xanthine, or the Yellow Coloring Matter insoluble in water.--We have prepared this coloring matter from many yellow flowers, but chiefly from Helianthus annuus.