cosmetiques.

SECTION X.

MILK, OR EMULSIONS.

In the perfumery trade, few articles meet with a more ready sale than
that class of cosmetiques denominated milks. It has long been known that
nearly all the seeds of plants which are called nuts, when decorticated
and freed from their pellicle, on being reduced to a pulpy mass, and
rubbed with about four times their weight of water, produce fluid which
has every analogy to cow's milk. The milky appearance of these emulsions
is due to the minute mechanical division of the oil derived from the
nuts being diffused through the water. All these emulsions possess great
chemical interest on account of their rapid decomposition, and the
products emanating from their fermentation, especially that made with
sweet almonds and pistachios (_Pistachia vera_).

In the manufacture of various milks for sale, careful manipulation is of
the utmost importance, otherwise these emulsions "will not keep;" hence
more loss than profit.

"Transformation takes place in the elements of vegetable caseine
(existing in seeds) from _the very moment_ that sweet almonds are
converted into almond-milk."--LIEBIG. This accounts for the
difficulty many persons find in making milk of almonds that does not
spontaneously divide, a day or so after its manufacture.

MILK OF ROSES.

Valencia almonds (blanched), 1/2 lb.
Rose-water, 1 quart.
Alcohol (60 o.p.), 1/4 pint.
Otto of rose, 1 drachm.
White wax, spermaceti, oil soap, each, 1/2 oz.

_Manipulation_.--Shave up the soap, and place it in a vessel that can be
heated by steam or water-bath; add to it two or three ounces of
rose-water. When the soap is perfectly melted, add the wax and
spermaceti, without dividing them more than is necessary to obtain the
correct weight; this insures their melting slowly, and allows time for
their partial saponification by the fluid soap; occasional stirring is
necessary. While this is going on, blanch the almonds, carefully
excluding every particle that is in the least way damaged. Now proceed
to beat up the almonds in a scrupulously clean mortar, allowing the
rose-water to trickle into the mass by degrees; the runner, as used for
the oil in the manufacture of olivine, is very convenient for this
purpose. When the emulsion of almonds is thus finished, it is to be
strained, _without pressure_, through cl