But, starting with phenol again, let us heat it with caustic alkali and chloroform.  This gives us two new compounds of the same composition, but differing a little in the order of the atoms.  If you refer back to the diagram of the benzene ring which I gave in the last chapter, you will see that there are six hydrogen atoms attached to it.  Now any or all these hydrogen atoms may be replaced by other elements or groups and what the product is depends not only on what the new elements are, but where they are put.  It is like spelling words.  The three letters t, r and a mean very different things according to whether they are put together as art, tar or rat.  Or, to take a more apposite illustration, every hostess knows that the success of her dinner depends upon how she seats her guests around the table.  So in the case of aromatic compounds, a little difference in the seating arrangement around the benzene ring changes the character.  The two derivatives of phenol, which we are now considering, have two substituting groups.  One is—­O-H (called the hydroxyl group).  The other is—­CHO (called the aldehyde group).  If these are opposite (called the para position) we have an odorless white solid.  If they are side by side (called the ortho position) we have an oil with the odor of meadowsweet.  Treating the odorless solid with methyl alcohol we get audepine (or anisic aldehyde) which is the perfume of hawthorn blossoms.  But treating the other of the twin products, the fragrant oil, with dry acetic acid ("Perkin’s reaction”) we get cumarin, which is the perfume part of the tonka or tonquin beans that our forefathers used to carry in their snuff boxes.  One ounce of cumarin is equal to four pounds of tonka beans.  It smells sufficiently like vanilla to be used as a substitute for it in cheap extracts.  In perfumery it is known as “new mown hay.”

You may remember what I said on a former page about the career of William Henry Perkin, the boy who loved chemistry better than eating, and how he discovered the coal-tar dyes.  Well, it is also to his ingenious mind that we owe the starting of the coal-tar perfume business which has had almost as important a development.  Perkin made cumarin in 1868, but this, like the dye industry, escaped from English hands and flew over the North Sea.  Before the war Germany was exporting $1,500,000 worth of synthetic perfumes a year.  Part of these went to France, where they were mixed and put up in fancy bottles with French names and sold to Americans at fancy prices.

The real vanilla flavor, vanillin, was made by Tiemann in 1874.  At first it sold for nearly $800 a pound, but now it may be had for $10.  How extensively it is now used in chocolate, ice cream, soda water, cakes and the like we all know.  It should be noted that cumarin and vanillin, however they may be made, are not imitations, but identical with the chief constituent of the tonka and vanilla beans and, of course, are equally wholesome or harmless.  But the nice palate can distinguish a richer flavor in the natural extracts, for they contain small quantities of other savory ingredients.