SOME ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF PERFUMERY 309 analytical techniques to finished bases and perfumes, and the second, that it will enable progress in perfumery to be discussed in an open and free atmosphere. It is our united aim that the public should receive the best possible finished product. In so far as we achieve this the market for perfumery products will become larger, to the advantage of all. (Received: 27th September 1962) Introduction by the lecturer The formulae were put into the paper to illustrate that in certain classes of product you have a very high-cost element in a very small number of constituents. One has constantly to look for ways of avoiding steadily increasing costs, but when you look to other natural sources for raw material you get a situation where the diminished cost of the natural product from the low cost area is offset by the diminished value that one finds in practice. It turns out that the costs of the oils offered on the open market often approximate closely to the values which may be set upon them in actual use. So one looks further to see if one cannot find a means of employing bases, either completely natural, or chemical, or combinations thereof, and there again one finds the results to some extent disappointing up to now, although theoretically they could be very good. As far as I am aware, up to now no one has succeeded in producing really satisfactory substitutes for these particular expensive naturals, and indeed for any of the naturals which I personally use--so long as they are being used in their proper manner. I am thinking of the use of Bergamot in soap, which is probably an improper way of using Bergamot anyway, because it is not fully stable. I dealt rather sketchily with some materials which seem to me to help in avoiding the use of such large quantities of very expensive materials, and I rather deliberately left out two or three such materials because they are treated in rather a confidential way. DISCUSSION DR. G. B. PICKERING: At the Tropical Products Institute we have a section which deals with essential oils and spices, and one of its functions is to help overseas producers who are interested in these materials. In view of the lecturer's remarks, it might be constructive to outliae some of the difficulties which overseas growers encounter when trying to produce perfumery materials. Firs fly, the production of expensive oils and floral extracts requires considerable skill, so that until recently it would be the European farmer in the tropics and not the local inhabitants who would have to undertake work of this kind. Such farmers, with great areas of land to manage, and

310 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS only unskilled labour available, tend to concentrate on a few large-scale crops, such as coffee, pyrethrum, sisal or tobacco, for which much larger markets are available. They have little time for the small-scale experiments which are so necessary in the development of essential oil plants, and frequently only turn to these when other crops are over-produced. Attracted by the high price per pound of floral products, they make a few desultory experiments, meet with difficulties, and abandon the attempt once the market for the staple crops returns to normal. Before condemning them, we should remember that the difficulties are formidable. Not only is there the tropical climate, with its short periods of violent rains, followed by long periods of drought, but the plant meta- bolism may be changed or even fail to survive in the new environment. Many plants yield very different oils when transplanted into a new habitat, and some temperate plants--peppermint is one--will not mature properly in the 12-hour period of daylight fr, und near the equator. Again, distillation is an art unknown to the ordinary farmer and only a few manufacturers of chemical plant know of the essential oil still. These remarks apply with greater force to solvent extraction. Finally, the new producer is faced with a market where prices fluctuate widely, and sometimes violently, and although his product can, to an increasing extent, be assessed scientifically, the final test--that of the perfumer--is subjective and, he suspects, sometimes influenced by the state of the market. The manufacturer is, naturally, unwilling to incorporate an oil with new properties into his formulation without an assured supply, whilst the producer does not care to risk a large expenditure on what appears to him to be a difficult product for a fickle market, and so a vicious circle is formed. In spite of these difficulties, there are many perfumery materials that could be produced in new territories and some, I suspect, may ultimately be produced there for local consumption whether the European manufacturer buys them or not. Before turning in despair to synthetics, both users and growers might try to co-operate once more to produce the natural perfume materials. TI•E L•CTUR•R: I have much sympathy with your remarks, and would like to reassure you that there will always be a very substantial demand for natural products whatever may happen in the field of synthetics. Perfumery seeks diversity above all else, and in some astonishing way natural oils seem to have greater differentiation than one would suppose from a study of the chemical bodies of which they are composed. Of course, where we are considering established oils the difficulties of setting up pro- duction in new territories are immense. The French nation as a whole are much more perfumery conscious than any other and this may account for