HOW ATTAR OF ROSES IS MADE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue 4254, 3 July 1895, Page 6

HOW ATTAR OF ROSES IS MADE.

Since the emancipation of the Balkan Provinces the manufacture of attar of roses has become a great industry in Bulgaria, and has been taken up on a large scale in Germany. We have all been accustomed to connect the fabrication of attar of roses with Persia and Syria, and even now India and Constantinople furnish probably the largest markets for it ; but, although the art of making it was discovered in Persia, the manufacture has now nearly or quite died out, and the centre of the business is now the country about Kazanlik, on the South slope of the Balkans, close to the Shipka or Wild Rose Pass, famous in the history of the Russo-Turkish war. The rose-growing belt is situated at an average altitude of [ I,oooft abjve the sea, and extends to a length of about seventy miles, with an j average breadth of ten miles. On this ground are produced annually from 5,000,000,000 to 6,000,000,000 rose blossoms. The number of varieties cultivated is very small. Ninety per cent, of all the blossoms are taken from a bushy variety of the Rosa Damascena, or damask rose, known to onr gardeners mainly as the ancestor from which the infinite variety of hybrid perpetual roses derive a large part of their blood. Of the remaining 10 per cent, a part are gathered from the white musk rose, which is frequently planted as a hedge around the fields of pink Damascena, while the rest are furnished by a dark red variety of Damascena. Other sorts of roses have been tried, but some yield no attar at all, and others give an essence having the perfume of violets or pineapples or hyacinth rather than of roses. _______________ The meanest man on record is said io live in Centre County, Pa. He sold his son-in-law one-half interest in a cow, and then refused to divide the milk, maintaining that he sold the front half. The buyer was also required to provide the feed the cow consumed, and was compelled to carry water to her three times a day. Recently the cow ! hooked the old man, and he is suing the son-in-law for damages ! An extreme case of mixing words and metaphors was overheard in Yorkshire. A woman was very angry with some people, and denounced "them as " inward whitewashed lambs and outward raving wolves." It would be hard to compress more confusion into the space ! A clergyman once gave out the lesson as being taken from the Colostle to the Episians. His mistake was similar to the announcement of another divine that the first lesson was taken from the Dook of Beuteronomy. Little Boy: "Mamma, I wish you'd find out who it was hypnotised me, and punish 'em severely." Mamma: " Wha-at?" Boy: "While you was out I was pulled right into the paniry an' forced to eav a hull lot of these tarts you said I wasn't to touch."