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

Your obedient servant, SEPTIMUS PIESSE. CHEMISTRY AND PERFUMERY.[P] SIR, The discussion about chemistry and perfumery, in reality amounts to this: Mr. Septimus Piesse confines the term "perfumery" to such things as Eau de Cologne, &c.; perfumed soaps, groceries, &c., he does not appear to class as "perfumery." Now the artificial scents are as yet chiefly used for the latter substances, which in common language, and, I should say, in a perfumer's nomenclature also, would be included in perfumery. The authority for cows' urine being used for perfumery is to be found in a little French work called, I believe, "La Chimie de l'Odorat" in which a full description is given of the collection of fresh urine and its application to this purpose. I need scarcely say, that it is the benzoic acid of the urine which is the odoriferous principle. Your obedient servant, A PERFUMER. [When benzoic acid is prepared by any of the wet processes, it is free from the fragrant volatile oil which accompanies it when prepared by sublimation from the resin, and to which oil the acid of commerce owes its peculiar odor. This fact completely nullifies the above assertion.--SEPTIMUS PIESSE.]