![]() The odor was so strong that the vessel was obliged to be moved out of the laboratory." Piesse in his "Art of Perfumery " does not rank the perfuming value of this substance highly for he says: " A modern compiler, speaking of ambergris, says ' it smells like dried cow dung.' Never having smelled this substance we cannot say whether the simile be correct but we certainly consider that its perfume is most incredibly overrated nor can we forget that Homberg found that a vessel, in which he had made a long digestion of the human faeces, had acquired a very strong and perfect smell of ambergris, insomuch that anyone would have thought that a great quantity of essence of ambergris had been made in it. " Here is also a fountain of pitch and bitumen- that runs into the sea, which the fishes swallow, and then vomit up again, turned into ambergris." It is pretty certain it was known as a rare perfume in the fifteenth century, for Sinbad, the sailor, being wrecked somewhere in the Indian Ocean says: It is very scarce and seldom appears except as " essence of amber" or " extrait d'ambre," forms of perfumery having this material for their base and bearing a very high price. It is for this quality it is so highly esteemed. It is amorphous, or in roundish pieces, frequently formed in layers, of a grayish color whence its name with streaks of whitish yellow, brown, or black. ![]() Whale fishers look for it in the intestines of the whale, and its value is so great that whalemen pursue with eagerness the sickly cetacese although they promise a scant return of oil. It is usually found floating on the surface of the sea in those parts of the ocean most frequented by the spermaceti whale a small barren island off the coast of Yucatan, having received its name of Ambergris from the quantity of that substance found on its shores. It is considered generally to be a result of a morbid secretion of the whale'sliver, and is probably produced also by other oceanic mammalia. Ambergris, or " gray amber " as its name denotes, is simply and only a portion of the excreta of the sperm whale, Physeter macrocepha-lus, resulting from disease. ![]() ![]() This singular substance is one among those derived from animal sources that are employed in the perfumer's art, and although its origin would seem to preclude its use by the fas-tidieus, the same objection would equally apply to musk, the product of the civet cat or musk deer, which if not an excretion is a secretion intended probably, as is the offensive liquid ejected by the skunk, as a means of defense. ![]()
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