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its buyer in the market. In case during the first part of the manu- 

 facturing season the demand for the new oil should only be slight, and 

 there should be no incitement to higher prices, it is quite possible that 

 it will not pay to work up the fruit for oil, and that larger quantities of 

 it than usual will be shipped in the green state to Upper Italy and Northern 

 Europe, with the result that the next season's output of oil will be re- 

 stricted. On the other hand, if the demand for oil should be good, it is 

 to be expected that the prices will advance to a level at which manufacturing 

 will again become remunerative. 



In the plain of Barcellona the crop-prospects are fairly good, in 

 Calabria they are less favourable. 



In our previous Reports we have already given prominence to the 

 fact that the business in citrate of lime has by law been withdrawn from 

 the open market and placed under the control of a syndicate known as 

 the Camera Agrumaria, the object being to keep up the prices of this 

 article, and to enable the owners of lemon-orchards to obtain still higher 

 rates for their fruit than in the past. 



A clause in the Act relating to this matter provides that, if occasion 

 should arise, the essential oils of the different varieties of agrumi may 

 also be brought under the monopoly of the Camera Agrumaria, a decree 

 from the Royal Cabinet being sufficient to legalise such incorporation. 



Up to the present the results achieved by the Camera Agrumaria have 

 been extremely poor. In the short time during which it has been in 

 existence it has not only ruined quite a number of small proprietors, but 

 it has also failed to yield the benefits hoped for by the large landowners, 

 although foreign buyers have been compelled to pay much enhanced 

 rates for their citrate of lime. 



The large landed proprietors and the associations formed by the latter 

 in Acireale and Palermo, together with the Camera Agrumaria upon which 

 the former lean for support, are of opinion that it will serve their interests 

 to remove essential oils as well as citrate of lime from the competition 

 of the open market, and to place them under the control of the Camera 

 Agrumaria. This Chamber, or a separate Syndicate to be founded for the 

 purpose, is to take in hand the sole sale of Sicilian essential oils, to keep 

 up the prices and, by charging an enormous commission, to squeeze out of 

 the pockets of foreign consumers the millions which the Camera Agrumaria 

 has so far failed to procure for the large landed proprietors. A draft-scheme 

 embodying these proposals has recently been submitted to the Ministry in 

 Rome by the Association of landed proprietors, and to a man the owners 

 of lemon -orchards are sedulously urging the acceptance of the scheme. 



It should be unnecessary in this place to enter into particulars with 

 the object of showing how ruinous such a monopoly would be for the 

 essential oil trade. 



