Perfume Ingredients Come from Over 20 Countries

Lake County Mail, Issue 19, 1 October 1947, Page 9

Perfume Ingredients Come from Over 20 Countries

Half the charm of perfume is that it should be elusive, and it is advisable to use more than one because the olfactory nerve loses when a particular perfume is used a great deal, and the sin of over perfume is committed. Contributions from more than 20 countries and probably 100 processes go to the making of a single good perfume. There is scarcely a country that does not produce something for the scent bottle, and none of the modern perfumes contain fewer than 20 separate ingredients. From Grasse, main centre of the perfume industry of France, famous for its fragrant fields of flowers, come jasmine, tuberoses, orange blossom, mimosa, hyacinth and many other flowers. Roses from Bulgaria From Bulgaria comes the famous attar of roses, one ton of petals yielding about lOoz of extract. From Arabia eorae frankincense and myrrh. Abyssinia’s contribution is its indigenous wild cat that yields the necessary fixative, much used in sophisticated perfumes. From the Shalimar Gardens of Kashmir comes the violet-scented costus root. Sumatra and Java give beside flowers, oil of vetiver from the fields of khus khus grass. From Singapore comes patchouli, and bonzein from Siam. New Zealand Ambergis In New Zealand the whalers watch out for ambergris, the most delicate and valuable of animal fixatives, which is used in light perfumes and rvithout which eau-de-cologne would be nothing but fugitive sweetness. Tibet gives us musk another fixative from little musk deer. From Sicily comes bergamot; Tuscany orris-root; Australia the beronia flower. From Peru the luxuriant Peru blossom; Cayenne, rosewood; Tahiti, vanilla; Russia, coriander; Canada, castoreum from the beaver, which produces scents like Russian leather. Africa offers cloves from Zanzibar and geranium from Kenya,