SCENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

SCENT

RARE, EXOTIC PERFUMES AMBERGRIS AND JASMINE In the making of scent there is first tho base, some scent of another time, like bergamot from tho eighteenth century. It must bo brought up to date by adding other essences, flowers and synthotic. Take the case of ambergris. That is an internal secretion of special fish, the sturgeon, the cachalot whale, which they produco in the North Seas. The northern fisherman, picks up tho lumps; it is greasy and firm with a marine odour; and it is sent down to tho London market. Roman women used to rub balls of it on their arms, to make an amber skin. In Egypt they eat it. They think it restores the vitality. It is put in alchohol, 25 parts to a 1000, and let to mature two or three years; the longer the better, but too long is too expensive and that is the base. Castoreum from the castor, tho beaver in the Hudson Bay, from a little gland, and musk from Tonking, from tho gland of a musk rat; those also are used. Only the English dare buy the raw musk in the gland. Musk is delicious. It smells of Russia leather. Then there are the flowers —hyacinths from Holland, roses from France and Bulgaria. Jasmine from Provence, one thousand kilos of jasmine flowers _ to make one kilo of essence. Those jasmine hills; you have not seen them? They are like the Arabian Nights for odour. Jasmine is to perfume what butter is to cooking. There is no good perfume without jasmine; there is no good cooking without butter. It makes a chord of scent. It rounds out the whole, fills the gaps. Tuberoses are the most expensive. Five thousand of your pounds of flowers to make two and a-half of essence, and it is twelve thousand francs the kilo; for tho rectified and concentrated, one hundred and ten thousand. Last of all, a chemical essence, synthetic, is added to give modernity, verve, excitement.