Lecture on perfumes, flower farming, and the methods of obtaining the odours of plants : delivered before the Royal Horticultural Society ... / by Septimus Piesse.

  • Piesse, G. W. Septimus (George William Septimus), 1820-1882.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lecture on perfumes, flower farming, and the methods of obtaining the odours of plants : delivered before the Royal Horticultural Society ... / by Septimus Piesse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    our day, appear not to exceed in artistic merit those made in former ages; indeed, those depicted on the walls of Mero, and upon the Greek coins, are even more beautiful than any we have here. This fault is not that nations burn less incense than formerly, hut from the want of artistic education and taste among our people, whose manufactures are diffused throughout the world. We may include in this class of perfumes all those parts of plants which are fragrant, such as the long seed pod of the Vanilla plant; the Bean of the Dipterix odorata, or Tonquin Bean, which our grandfathers carried in their snuff boxes; the root of the Iris Jlorentina, or Orris root, about 25 tons of which are consumed every year by Britannia at her toilet; the Rhizome of an Indian grass, known as Vitivert or Kus Kus; fragrant woods, such as the Santal, and the Myall, or Violet wood of Australia; odoriferous seeds, as Carraway and Nutmeg; in fact, our first division includes every vegetable substance which has a pleasing fragrance, like some dried flowers. Per- fumers grind these several bodies to powder, then mix them in various proportions; the results are, the various Sachet Powders in such universal use. Examples of which are to be found upon the show table. Class II. are those Perfumes which are procured by Distillation. This is the first step to separate the odorous principle from the material which contains it. As soon as the Greeks and the Romans learned the nse of the Almembic or Still, which was an invention imported by them from Egypt, they quickly adapted it to the separation of the odorous principle from the numerous fragrance- bearing plants which are indigenous to Greece and Italy. An essential oil or otto thus procured from orange-flowers