As regards the cultivation of roses, the special species grown are the red rose (_Rosa damascena_) and various species of white rose, of which the _Rosa moscata_ is the most used, the best and most extensive plantations being at Kazanlik, Karlovo, Klissoura, and Stara-Sagora. I was afforded an opportunity of visiting one of the otto-of-rose distilleries, and the sweet, penetrating perfume of it clings still to the nostrils. Bulgarian otto-of-rose is famous the world over, and its production is carried on in 175 communes in the departments of Philippopoli and Stara-Sagora. The chief manufacturers and exporters of otto-of-rose are Messrs. Shipkoff & Co. of Kazanlik, who export about two-thirds of the whole rose produce. This firm, as well as the others, make advances to the peasantry upon their growing crops of roses, and the peasant pays these advances in otto-of-rose already distilled. The firms make it a part of the contract that the extract must be pure, and can refuse to accept it if adulterated. As a check, all the exporters make it a point to themselves distil in the various rose-growing districts for the purpose of obtaining the proper standard of purity. I had an opportunity of visiting Mr. Theodore Shipkoff, Deputy for Kazanlik, of the great firm of Shipkoff & Co. He showed me over the factory, and gave me a number of extremely interesting details regarding this unique industry. It appears that nowadays it is not an easy matter to obtain pure otto-of-rose. Some forty years ago the entire rose industry was an ideal one. No farmers, small or big, adulterated their otto. They knew nothing about adulteration. In their primitive simplicity and honesty, it would have been altogether against their nature to falsify in any way their produce. The jobbers and dealers who used to come from Adrianople and Constantinople to buy it, and who at that time controlled the whole exportation, while buying it from the growers in its pure state, soon began to adulterate it with the Turkish geranium oil (_Idris Yaghi_). They found this way of adulterating the otto-of-rose so profitable that, in order to use a larger percentage of geranium oil and at the same time to render it less easily detected, they began to import from Constantinople the crude geranium oil, and in the presence of the growers to redistil and refine it in rose-flowers and rose-water, thus taking away its pungent and heavy vegetable odour. Some of the growers soon learned to do this themselves, and the peddling traders started regular factories for the express purpose of refining geranium oil and selling it afterwards to the peasants for purposes of adulteration. In this way many villages were gradually corrupted, and the otto-of-rose they produced was more or less adulterated with geranium oil; but most of the adulteration has always been done by the exporting jobbers and dealers. This, of course, brought much discredit to the rose industry,