Puppies for Sale
A little boy lived in a small town of Northern California called Oxnard. He was a lovely boy but he lost his left leg in a car accident and had to walk by a false leg (假肢). He couldn’t follow other kids. He felt lonely and decided to keep a pet dog as his friend.
One day, he walked past a pet shop and saw a sign above the door that said: “Puppies for Sale”. The little boy asked the shop owner, “I want to buy one of your puppies. Can I please look at the puppies?”
The pet shop owner got impressed with the honesty of the boy. “Sure,” said the shop owner. He smiled and whistled loudly. Five puppies ran down the walkway of the pet shop.
The little boy’s eyes danced with pleasure. As the puppies made their way towards the fence, the little boy noticed that one puppy was falling behind. This puppy was limping (跛行) and trying its best to catch up the others.
Immediately the little boy pointed out towards the limping puppy and asked, “What’s wrong with that little puppy?” The shop owner explained that when the puppy was born the pet hospital had examined the little puppy and had discovered there was something wrong with its back leg. It would limp for the rest of his life.
The little boy got really excited and said “That is the puppy that I want to buy.” The shop owner replied, “No, that puppy is not for sale. Nobody will buy that puppy due to his disabled leg. If you really want him, I’ll just give him to you for free.”
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The little boy got quite upset with the reply of the shop owner.
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However, the boy decided to buy the little puppy and thought that he should pay for it.
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Natural perfume or artificial perfume?
The use of perfume dates back to earliest times. The ancient Egyptians perfumed the bricks used to build their houses and temples, and wore perfumed fat in their hair.
These days, consumer demand for perfumed products is intense. In the home, from washing-up liquid to paper tissues, soap to shoe polish, fragrance is the common ingredient. Artificial leather is perfumed to make it smell like the real thing, and in Japan, some companies spray perfume through building’s air-conditioning system at key times of the working day.
To meet the demands of the perfume industry, scientific developments have made the companies use substitutes for some natural ingredients. Scientists have also discovered that natural and artificial materials are highly complementary and are acceptable to the consumer. Even the most expensive perfumes are in fact compounds of both natural and artificial ingredients. The French perfume manufacturers were among the first to blend artificial compound when they made the famous perfume Chanel No. 5 in 1923.
Producing natural oils is very expensive. For example, 1000 kilos of jasmine flowers make just one kilo of extract. Using artificial fragrance has reduced the costs of manufacture overall, although the chemical operations involved can be very time-consuming and costly-sixteen or seventeen chemical separations may be needed to produce the right result.
Nevertheless, the use of complex chemical to reproduce fragrance is likely to increase, as the artificial ingredients as well as natural oils gives perfume manufacturers more control over the production process, which is why many classic perfumes owe their characteristic top notes to fruits of science not nature.
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