ACACIA POMADE, commonly called CASSIE POMATUM, is made with a purified body-grease, by maceration with the little round yellow buds of the Acacia Farnesiana.

Black currant leaves, and which the French term cassie, have an odor very much resembling cassie (acacia), and are used extensively for adulterating the true acacia pomades and oils.  The near similarity of name, their analogous odor (although the plants have no botanical connection), together with the word cassia, a familiar perfume in England, has produced generally confused ideas in this country as to the true origin of the odor now under discussion.  Cassie, casse, cassia, it will be understood now, are three distinct substances; and in order to render the matter more perspicuous in future, the materials will always be denominated ACACIA, if prepared from the Acacia Farnesiana; CASSE, when from black currant; and CASSIA, if derived from the bark of the Cinnamomum Cassia.

BENZOIN POMADE AND OIL.

Benzoic acid is perfectly soluble in hot grease.  Half an ounce of benzoic acid being dissolved in half a pint of hot olive or almond oil, deposits on cooling beautiful acicular crystals, similar to the crystals that effloresce from vanilla beans; a portion of the acid, however, remains dissolved in the oil at the ordinary temperature, and imparts to it the peculiar aroma of benzoin; upon this idea is based the principle of perfuming grease with gum benzoin by the direct process, that is, by macerating powdered gum benzoin in melted suet or lard for a few hours, at a temperature of about 80 deg.  C. to 90 deg.  C. Nearly all the gum-resins give up their odoriferous principle to fatty bodies, when treated in the same way; this fact becoming generally known, will probably give rise to the preparation of some new remedial ointments, such as Unguentum myrrhae, Unguentum assafoetida, and the like.

TONQUIN POMADE, and TONQUIN OIL, are prepared by macerating the ground Tonquin beans in either melted fat or warm oil, from twelve to twenty-eight hours, in the proportion of

Tonquin beans, 1/2 lb. 
Fat or oil, 4 lbs.

Strain through fine muslin; when cold, the grease will have a fine odor of the beans.

VANILLA OIL AND POMADE.

Vanilla pods, 1/4 lb. 
Fat or oil, 4 lbs.

Macerate at a temperature of 25 deg.  C. for three or four days; finally strain.

These pomatums and oils, together with the French pomades and huiles already described, constitute the foundation of the preparations of all the best hair greases sold by perfumers.  Inferior scented pomatums and oils are prepared by perfuming lard, suet, wax, oil, &c., with various ottos; the results, however, in many instances more expensive than the foregoing, are actually inferior in their odor or bouquet—­for grease, however slightly perfumed by maceration or enfleurage with flowers, is far more agreeable to the olfactory nerve than when scented by ottos.