ambergris

Product Description

Whitish-greyish,crumbly exterior layer with light-brown cocoa-coloured waxy interior,football-sized,about three-and-a-half kilograms,passes hot needle test for ambergris(pushing a red hot needle into it produces a puff of white smoke then gooey black sticky toffee-like residue),floats,has fragrance like quality perfume.Found while strolling on a beach approximately **0 km North of Cape Town.I saw an unusual rounded piece of flotsam at the high-tide mark,and when I gave it a nudge with my toe it felt heavy,unlike the bleached,dried-out bits of other marine organisms scattered about.I have kept it in a cloth bag.I tried making an infusion by grinding some fragments of the object up with a pestle and mortar,then placing the powder in a glass jar with about fifty millilitres of *5% surgical alcohol solution and bringing this to the boil and simmering for *0 minutes in a saucepan of boiling water.The resulting liquid was light gold in colour and has a powerful musky fragrance highly suggestive of a classic perfume.