JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS much ground with which, naturally, he is already familiar. For the tyro perfumer, however, there does not seem to be available any "Elements of Perfumery" com- parable to the many primers upon harmonics in music, or the applica- tion of the principles of colour combination, written for the benefit of art students. I am frilly aware that, in respect of this lacuna, there is a reason for a certain amount of reticence. Never- theless, I should like to put on record some observations upon what I venture to term the "mechanics of perfumery," as I think that collec- tively these should prove of general interest and, moreover, capable of individual interpretation and adap- tation. THE WORK OF S•?TX•US PXESSE In an endearour to find a suitable point of departure I considered it expedient to turn to what is probably the widest-known of the earlier texts of our subject, namely, the "Art of Perfumery" of Septimus Piesse. Bearing in mind the wealth of infor- mation contained therein, I am of the opinion that this work is fully entitled to the appellation of the "Perfumer's Bible," especially as it has also been made available in French, German and Italian, and it would seem that almost every author of similar works appearing during the past three or four decades has formulated his contribution upon the Piesse pattern, namely, by including an introductory materia aromatica and following this by recipes or prescriptions for the "dispensing" of floral and bouquet perfumes, and concluding with a toilet and cosmetic formulary. I am strongly of the opinion that the point of outstanding interest of this work (although it is now nearly a century since the first edition of the "Art" appeared in London in 1855) is that the sum total of the common knowledge of his time which Piesse recorded covers such an extensive background. Bearing in mind the date just mentioned, it should also be of interest to those who have not had an opportunity of examining this text, which is becoming somewhat difficult to acquire, to appreciate something of the underlying artistic technique of this "Master of Perfumery" in handling the simple florals, for he says: "Scents, like sounds, appear to influence the olfactory nerve in certain definite degrees. There is, as it were, an octave of odours like an octave in music certain odours coincide, like the keys of an instru- ment. Such as almond, heliotrope, vanilla and clematis blend together, each producing different degrees of a nearly similar impression. Again, we have citron, lemon', orange peel and verbena, forming a higher octave of smells, which blend in a similar manner. The analogy is completed by what we are pleased to call semi- odours, suck as rose and rose-geran- ium for the half~note petitgrain, neroli, a black key, followed by fleur d'oranger. Then we have patchouli, sandalwood and vetivert, and many others running into each other." 180

sIMPLE ]FLORAL PERFUMES In the fifth edition, which appeared in 1891, there is added an interesting inset taken from the Chambers' JournaZ review of the first edition: "We know that music depends upon a fixed mathematical law, not invented by man, but existing in Nature. Nature is not a prodigal in her operations--she is no waster of power the better she is under- stood, the more simple she appears and there is nothing, therefore, con- trary to sound reason in the idea that the whole of the pleasures of the sense of smell will be found to depend upon cognate laws." lqATUIRAL LAWS AND PATTERNS As an apt corollary to this opinion, I have found a very significant paragraph in a volume of modern nature stories, entitled "Pan's Gar- den," the author, Algernon Black- wood, in the essay on "Sand," saying: "Life, using matter to express itself in bodily shape, first traces a geometrical pattern. From the low- est form in crystals, upwards to more complicated patterns in the higher organisations--there is always first this geometrical pattern as skeleton. For geometry lies at the root of all possible phenomena and is the mind's interpretation of a living movement towards the shape that shall express it." Should the reader be curious enough to seek some corroboration of this idea, I think that the most remarkable example to be found in nature is that recorded by Thoreau in the "Spring" chapter of "Walden, or Life in the Woods" (1845), where the author takes several pages to describe the geo- metrical forms which thaMng sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a steep embankment, and concludes, even before reaching the end of his argument, that: "You will find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves it so labours with the idea internally. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it." In concluding this digression, I feel that, although these impressions are admittedly subjective, yet they may perhaps have some direct bearing upon my suggestion of the "mechanics of perfumery," because it is obvious that something must be known about the component- parts before there can be any under- standing of the whole built from them. I would add, however, that al- though I have not arrived at any finite opinion, yet if one pauses to reflect, it is always on some imagina- tive impression that the more solid foundation of facts is based, and from Dalton's "symbols" for the chemical elements or the perception of Kekul• of the graphic function of the hexagon, much has subsequently evolved. Even as a result of practi- cal work I have come to the conclu- sion that, in the simple and com- pound asterisk forms of the snow- flake and the ground plan of floral architecture observed in the dia- grams of botany, a similar centre-to- 181