The extent of this manufacture is much larger than is generally supposed. Mr. Rimmel states, from data which he has been able to obtain, that there are 40 manufacturing perfumers in London alone, employing from 20 to 100 hands each; that our imports of essential oils and perfumery materials reaches 200,000/. annually ; that the retail value of all the perfumery made in the United Kingdom cannot fall far short of 1,000,0001. a year ; and that there are 80 manufacturing perfumers in Paris, employing 2000 to 3000 hands. Mr. Rimmel gives the names, place of production, and form or condition, of about seventy substances employed by the manufacturing perfumer. The prices affixed to some of these are extraordinary—civet, 1/. per oz.; musk, 1/. 10s. per oz. ; ambergris, 2/. per oz.; essential oil of A coda farnesiana, 91. per oz.; essential oil of jasmine, 61. per oz.; while attar of roses, in its choicest and most concentrated form, runs up to 121. per oz., or threefold the value of pure gold, weight for weight.
It is worthy of mention, that, although manufacturing perfumers, such as Mr. Kimmel in the paper above adverted to, and Mr. Scptimus Piesse, in a recent volume relating to the subject, dwell chiefly on the obtaining of perfumes from flowers, fruits, and other pleasant sub stances ; chemists are well aware of methods by which perfumes can he obtained in a very different way, and from substances which do not at all accord with the names given to the perfumes. Dr. Lyon Playfair,
in his lecture on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851, said : " A peculiarly foetid oil, termed fusel oil, is formed in making brandy and whiskey ; this fusel oil, distilled with sulphuric acid and acetate of potash, gives the all of pears. The oil of apples is made from the same fusel oil, by distillation from sulphuric acid and bichroinate of potash.
The of pine-apples is obtained from a product of the action of putrid cheese on sugar ; or by making a soap with butter, and distilling it with alcohol and sulphuric acid; and is now largely employed in England in making pine-apple ale. Oil of gropes and oil of cognac, used to impart the flavour of French cognac to British brandy, are little else than fusel oil. The artificial all of bitter almonds, now so largely employed in perfuming soap, and for flavouring confectionary, is pre pared by the action of nitric acid. Many a fair forehead is damped with eau de millefleurs, without knowing that its essential ingredient is derived from the drainage of cowhouses." This lecture elicited some objections, on the ground that, although agreeable scents may be obtained from offensive substances, it does not follow that they are so in practice ; but probably the manufacturer who went to such sources would not be likely to own it publicly.