22S Variation in the Price and Supply of Wheat. 
SARDINIA. This island exports between 30,000 and 40,000 quaiters of 
wheat each year. Wheat and beans are two of the staple jivoductious. The 
island has not prospered of lato years. The price of labonr has risen ; thou- 
sands of able-bodied youths have been drained off by the war. The crops 
have been deficient. 
SICILY. Reports from Palermo and Messina in 1866 and 1867. — 
The vine disease has disappeared ; sulphuring is still continued. The disease 
among lemon and orange trees continues its ravages. Large tracts of land 
have now been planted with young bitter orange-trees, to be afterwards grafted 
with lemon. The bitter orange has hitherto escaped the disease. In con- 
sequence of the almost total failure of the olive crop last year, and the high price 
of oil, i^etroleum has been substituted. 
The disease continues to clear oft' the old races of silk-worms. The pro- 
vince of Catania, which had previously escajied, was attacked in 1867. 
Indigenous races of worms will soon be extinct, and must be replaced by 
worms of the Japan breed ; and the early-vegetating Chinese white mulberry 
must take the place of the black mulberry. The soil and climate of Sicily 
are highly favourable, but the peasantry who produce and those who reel or 
spin the raw silk for export are reduced to a state of misery. The domestic 
animals are mules, asses, oxen, and a few horses. Meat as dear as in England ; 
flour, 2hd. to 3d. per lb. ; potatoes, 9s. per cwt. : milk, 5d. per quart ; wine, 
id. to Qd. per quart. 
The agriculture of Sicily has recently undergone a gTeat change. Sicily, 
once called the granary of Rome, is now dejjendent on foreign countries for 
corn. 
The cultivation of wheat has been almost superseded by that of rice, flax, 
and cotton. 
The yield of wine in 1866 was very abundant, and good table wine sells for 
about Is. per gallon. 
Xo remedy has yet been discovered to arrest the disease which has com- 
mitted such ravages among orange and lemon trees. Gardens, which yielded 
from 80,000 to 100,000 oranges or lemons, do not give more than one-tenth 
of that figure. 
Oranges and lemons form two very important articles of the exports from 
Messina. 
In 1866, the quantity of fruit exported to EurOjie and America in its green, 
pickled, or liquid state amounted to 700,000 boxes, 2000 pifxis pickled lemons, 
2000 pipes raw or concentrated lemon juice, 350,000 lbs. avoirdupois of essence 
extracted from the peel. 1000 lemons, price 9s., yield 1 lb. avoirdupois of 
essence, worth 7s., and nine imperial gallons of lemon-juice, worth Gd. per 
gallon. Sixty gallons of raw lemon-juice are required to make ten gallons of 
concentrated juice. 
Silk Cidture. — The result of the silk campaign of the year 1866, in Sicily, 
was conspicuous in the further falling off in the breed of Macedonia worms, 
which had, from the partial success obtained in some localities during 1865, 
encouraged rearers to keep eggs from those worms, whilst rearers of other 
districts purchased eggs from the speculators, who procured them either direct 
from Macedonia, or from Calabrians, who furnishetl them with the assurance 
of their being of direct importation, whilst they had been chiefly reproduced 
in Calabria, or the north of Italy. 
The Japanese cartons were generally more unproductive than was an- 
ticipated, and this circumstance is attributed not only to the ui^satis- 
factory condition of a large portion of the supply, but also to the un- 
suitableness of the leaves of the black mulberry-trees as food for the Levant 
and Asiatic breeds of silk-worms. The cocoons produced in Sicily were 
chiefly from indigenous worms, tlie eggs for which had been procured in Sicily 
