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ORANGE CULTIVATION IN SCILY. 



By Acting Consul de Garston. 



(Extract from the " Foreign Office Report for the year 1895, on the 

 Consular District of Palermo.") 



Beport on the Cultivation of Oranges, Lemons, Citrons, and 

 Bergamots, as practised in Sicily and the " Calabrie," with a 

 brief Account of their Chief Products, (concluded). 



Ailments Peculiar to Lemons. 



As with oranges so with lemons, the various ailments to which they 

 are subject affect them very differently, some merely impairing slightly 

 their outward appearance, others, decomposing the structure of the fruit, 

 disorganising both the pulp and the rind, drying up or decomposing 

 the juice, and obliterating the oil cells ; others again, attacking chiefly 

 one or the other, belong to neither exclusively or absolutely, but should 

 be ranged under one of the two first categories, according to circum- 

 stances. 



1. To the first class belong the stained macchiati, whose rind is merely 

 marked with small circular green or grey spots, which, without injuring 

 the fruit materially, so disfigures it as to compel the packers to set them 

 aside. 



2. Undersized lemons, which being deficient in juice and essential 

 oil, are bought by home consumers at low rates. 



3. Pricked, punti, which are immaterially affected or seriously dam- 

 aged, according to the more or less early date of the puncture, which if 

 light and suffered by the green fruit, soon heals ; whereas if undergone 

 at a later period, will usually cause the fruit to decompose. 



4. Pitted lemons are those whose epicarpis extremely attenuated, and 

 sometimes almost destroyed in parts ; these are conspicuous from their 

 darker hue, and the fruit is usually considered of a perishable nature 

 when thus marked. 



5. Those deprived of essential oil cellules, termed spiritati, are also of 

 very little value. 



Under the second category must be ranged mouldy, watery, saffron 

 marked lemons, and which are mostly valueless, and can only here and 

 there become slightly utilisable for the extraction of juice when picked 

 ere the disease has made progress. 



There is a third class of diseases which affect the whole tree, and de- 

 stroy whole groves of lemon, orange, or bergamot plants. These ail- 

 ments are one and all of an epidemic nature, and have now become in 

 some regions quite endemic. The principal diseases of this kind are 

 the gum malady, the gangrene of the roots, or general cancerous affec- 

 tion of the whole tree. As no radical cure has as yet been obtained, no 

 mode of treatment has yet been accepted by common consent for its suc- 

 cess in combating these epidemics, the only course left open to the cul- 

 tivator is at present to eliminate those individuals who are assailed, or, 

 at least, when they happen to be isolated, to amputate early the diseased 

 limb, and in both cases to disinfect and renew the soil on the vacant 

 space and round the infected trunks. 



