390 THE CHEMISTEY OF ESSENTIAL OILS
OIL OF EAVENSARA AROMATICA.The leaves of Eavensara aromatica, a large laurel tree growing on
the high plateaus of Madagascar, yield a large amount of essential oil,
which has been examined by Ferrand and Bonnafores.
1
The oil con-
sists principally of a terpene, with a small amount of an oxygenated body
not identified. The terpene (?) boils at 171° to 172° and has a specific
gravity 0'881 and refractive index 1
*
4616.OIL OF AGONIS FLEXUOSA.Crozier
2
has obtained about 1 per cent, of essential oil from this
shrub, which closely resembles eucalyptus oil, containing 62 to 72 per
cent, of eucalyptol, cymene, pinene, traces of" alcohols, esters and
phenols, but no aldehydes.ROSACES.
OIL OF KOSES.Although at the present day oil or otto of rose is distilled almost
entirely in Bulgaria and France, only a very limited amount being pro-
duced elsewhere, there can be no doubt that the art of distilling roses
originated in Persia, and was practised on a large scale at a very
early date. The earliest record of this fact was discovered by Prof.
Fliickiger in an old work in the National Library in Paris. This docu-
ment states that between the years 810 and 817 of the Christian era,
during the reign of Kaliph Mamoun, the province of Faristan was re-
quired to pay an annual tribute of 30,000 bottles of rose water to the
Treasury of Bagdad. It is also stated by Istakhri that a considerable
quantity of rose water was produced throughout Faristan, and was from
thence sent to China, India, Yemen, Egypt, Andalusia, and Magreb (in
the Barbary States, especially to Morocco). The most important fac-
tories were at Dschur (now called Firuzabad), situate ^between Shiraz
and the coast.
The art of distilling roses was probably introduced into Western
countries by the Arabs.
The essential oil of the rose was described by Rossi in the latter half
of the sixteenth century, but was not discovered until 1612 in Persia,
and then only by accident. Sawyer gives the following historical details
of the discovery of otto of rose :—
The date of the discovery by the Persians of this valuable essence has
been ascertained by Langles to be 1612. He was thoroughly acquainted
with the languages and literature of the East, and in his excellent little
book^3 he shows that previous to this date (1612) no mention of otto of
rose is made in any work written in Oriental language, and that the
circumstances attending the discovery are for the first time described in
a work written in Persian by Mohammed Achem, entitled Tarykh mon-
tekheb lubdb, which is a history of the Great Moguls from the year
1525 to 1667. In this work mention of the essence is twice made.
3 ' Bull. Sci. pharmacol.,^20 (1913), 403.
3 P. and E.O. Record,^9 (1918), 58.
Reclierches stir la decouverte de VEssence de Roses, Paris, 1804.