Imagine the lengths one might go to protect access to a liquid that, in some cases, cost over $100 per ounce-20,000 times the cost of crude petroleum. Wars may be fought again-advertising wars- this time to claim a portion of the international perfume market, which, according to Smithsonian magazine, has sales of $10 billion each year.

Ever since the ancient Mesopotamians first used perfume in burial rites over 4,000 years ago, humanking has developed an obsession with the scent and its willing to pay amazingly high prices for something as intangible as a smell.

Puzzles by my own inexplicable fondness for aftershave, I've spent sometime researching our culture's

Quite likely, you think of perfume only as a smelly liquid. But many connoisseurs of the stuff would disagree. In fact, perfume is complex mixture of many ingredients.

Not all perfume ingrediets come from natural sources. Synthetic ingredients can imitate or enhance the smells of natuaral essential oils and can greatly reduce the cost of the perfume. In the case of the perfume classic Channel No.5, an artificial aldehyde provides the perfume with its signature scent.

partiality to perfume. Evern if you're someone who doesn't especially like to dabble Chanel or Pole behind your ears, you probably smell someone else's fragrance everyday. Or maybe yor use a product made with perfumes- such as soap, facial tissue, insecticides, or even cattle feed.

Some essential oils are found in animal products. According to Diane Ackerman in her book A Natural History of the Senses, the best known of these may be musk, a red, jelly-like secretion found in the gu

Some common words found in the essay are:
Channel No5, Persian Gulf, Chanel Pole, Edwin Morris, Comoro Islands, East Asian, , History Senses, essential oils, Diane Ackerman, aromatic oils, cattle feed, smithsonian magazine, smelly liquid, ingredients perfume, perfume smelly liquid, perfume smelly,
Approximate Word count = 643
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)