Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/116

104 catalogue merely, not a scientific classification. That is quite true. But what is also true is that the others we have quoted are little, if any, better. The fact is that we do not yet possess the knowledge necessary to enable us to arrange odours in classes.

The manufacturers, of course, concern themselves with agreeable and attractive odours only. To the great and growing company of the stinks they pay no attention whatever. For that reason their contribution to our knowledge is necessarily but partial and limited.

In their own proper domain, however, they can point to several great successes. They recognise, for practical purposes, about eighty primitive scents. Many natural (to say nothing of many unnatural) perfumes can now be prepared artificially, and some 80 prepared are said to be even more powerful than the natural productions. Artificial musk, for example, is one thousand times stronger than natural musk, Parker tells us. Deite, on the other hand, says that the smell of artificial musk is not equal to that of the natural ! Indeed, according to this authority, although synthetic perfumes play an important part in the concocting of scents, there are only a few of them which can be used instead of the natural product. What happens is that the artificial and the natural are generally used in combination. Thus the