In an extremely dilute condition musk is used for perfuming the finest soaps and sachets, and even in the manufacture of the most expensive and best perfumes, owing to its property of imparting permanence to very volatile odors. In the last-mentioned class, however, the quantity of musk must always be so small that its presence is not distinctly observed, since many persons find the pure odor of musk very disagreeable, while they praise the fragrance of such perfumes as contain an amount of this substance too small to be perceived by the olfactory nerves.
Civet.
Latin—Civetta; French—Civette; German—Zibeth.
This substance bears some resemblance to musk with reference to its derivation and the rôle it plays in the life of the animal from which it is obtained. The Viverridæ, a class of carnivora related to the cats and weasels, found in Asia and Africa, furnish this substance. It is obtained chiefly from the civet cat (Viverra Civetta) and the musk rat (Viverra Zibetha) which are kept in captivity for the purpose of abstracting from them from time to time the civet which is always formed anew.
Civet is the secretion of a double gland present both in the male and the female near the sexual organs. Fresh civet is a whitish-yellow mass of the consistence of butter or fat, and becomes thicker and darker on exposure to the air. Similar to musk, it has a strong odor which becomes pleasant on being diluted and is used both alone and for fixing other odors.
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE CHEMICAL PRODUCTS USED IN PERFUMERY.
In the manufacture of perfumery a considerable number of chemical products find application; in this place, however, we shall describe only those which are used very frequently and generally, and discuss the characteristics of those employed more rarely in connection with the articles of perfumery into which they enter. According to their application we may divide these substances into several groups, namely:
A. Chemicals which, without themselves serving as perfumes, are used exclusively for the extraction of odors.
B. Chemicals which, while not fragrant, are frequently employed in the preparation of perfumes. Under this head we have included also those substances which are not strictly chemical products, but originally come from the animal or vegetable kingdom, such as fats, spermaceti, and wax, yet cannot be used in perfumery unless they have undergone a process of chemical purification.
C. Chemical products used for coloring perfumes, so-called dye-stuffs.