Chemistry of Essential Oils

330 THE CHEMISTKY OF ESSENTIAL OILS

The oil varies so much in composition that no solubility values can

be usefully assigned to it. Messrs. Schimmel and Co. have given the

following figures for oils distilled in different countries:—

France.

Spain.

Corsica.

Syria.

Asia Minor

Cyprus.

Algeria.

Dalmatia

Specific Gravity.

0-890 to 0-904

0-913 „ 0-925

0-883 „ 0-887

0-893 „ 0-922

0-913

0-917

0-881 to 0-887

0-925

Rotation.

+ 15° to + 25°

+ 22° „ + 25° 20'

+ 22° „ + 27°

+ 11° „ + 26°

+ 10° 42'

+ 8° 11'

+ 26° to + 27° 30'

+ 13° 20'

Ester Value.

19 to 43

68 „ 86

13 „ 25

18 „ 31

39-4

20-9

17 to 20-6

134-8

OIL OF CLOVES.

The clove tree is a beautiful evergreen, indigenous to the Molucca
Islands. It is cultivated in several of the islands to the south of the
Moluccas, and in Sumatra, Penang, Malacca, Madagascar, the Sey-
chelles, Bourbon, Mauritius, the West Indies, Zanzibar, and Pemba,
our chief supply coming from the two last-named islands. The tree
is Eugenia caryophyllata (Caryophyllus aromaticus Linn.), and most
parts of the tree have a very aromatic odour. The spice we know as
cloves consists of the dried unexpanded flower buds, which are used in
the distillation of the oil. The flower stems are also used, but the oil,
although of very similar character, is not of so fine an aroma. As a
spice Penang cloves fetch the highest price, but Zanzibar cloves are
highly esteemed in commerce; it must be remembered, however, that
the majority of " Zanzibar " cloves in reality come from the adjacent
island of Pemba.
According to a writer in the Perfumery and Essential Oil Record,^1
much vagueness surrounded the source of cloves, the first definite state-
ment being by the Arabian geographer, Ibn Khurdadbah (A.D. 869 to
885), when he named the spice, together with cocoanuts, sugar, and
sandalwood as a product of Java. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller
of the thirteenth century, found cloves in Java, and assumed them to
be indigenous to that island. Later navigators showed that both these
observers had been misinformed, but it must be borne in mind that the
name Java was applied in a general sense by Arabian geographers to
the Islands of the Eastern Archipelago. It remained for Niccolo del
Conti, another Venetian pioneer trader of the fifteenth century, to clear
up the matter. He learned in Java that cloves did not actually grow
there, but were brought from the Banda Islands, fifteen days' sail,
farther east.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century Portugal was the premier
maritime power of the world, and while the Spaniards were opening
up the new and unknown West, the Portuguese were penetrating to
the old but vaguely understood East, and just a few of its world-old
mysteries were being revealed to European knowledge. One of these
mysteries solved was the origin of certain Oriental spices, notably the-

(^1) P. and E.O
M. (1916), 20.