Volatile components of Cortex Magnoliae Officinalis leaves from Hunan were extracted by steam distillation and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry combined with chemometrics methods，namely heuristic evolving latent projections and selective ion analysis.Temperature-programmed retention indices were used to improve the reliability of qualitative analysis.Total 54 compounds were identified，accounting for 84.95% of the total content of volatile ingredients of the studied sample.The major constituents are alpha-,beta- and gamma-eudesmol，which account for 13.10%,28.21% and 14.67%，respectively.In addition，there are seven compounds with relatively high contents，e.g.alpha-pinene（2.96%），linalool（1.71%），paeonol（1.88%），caryophyllene（2.04%），eremophilene（3.60%），alpha-selinene（3.84%） and 1,1,4,7-tetramethyl-1A,2,3,4,4A,5,6,7B-octahydro-1H-cyclopropa［E］azulene（1.34%）.The results indicated that employing chemometric methods in the analysis of the volatile chemical components in Chinese traditional medicines can greatly enhance the accuracy of qualitative analysis.The results obtained is helpful to the plant resources- exploitation and utilization of Cortex Magnoliae Officinalis.