Of all scent-yielding plants, none has a value at all equal to that of the orange. It is a mine of perfume in itself. The blossoms yield, according to their mode of treatment, two distinct odors, one having the true scent of the flower, the other a scent called Neroli. Orange peel, too, furnishes a delightful perfume, with which all of us are familiar; and lastly, the leaves give a scent inferior only to the true neroli. Here, then, we have from one plant no fewer than four perfumes. Orange stocks are raised from seeds or pips, and in the third year, they are grafted either with the Sweet Portugal or Bitter Bigaradier. In the fifth year, they should be planted where they are to stand; the soil in which they are to be placed should be trenched at least four feet deep, and well manured, inasmuch as fifty years, nay, even a century afterward, the results of good early treatment will be apparent. Orange trees require fifteen years to reach maturity, but they will produce both flowers and fruit in four or five years. When in full vigor, each tree yields on an average twenty-five pounds' weight of blossoms annually. Many plantations of orange trees at Nice are more than a hundred years old. At Fontainebleau, there may now be seen orange trees bearing flowers and fruit at the same time, that were planted by an ancestor of mine two hundred years ago. At Nice, a public market exists for the sale of orange blossoms during the season when the trees are in bloom. The bitter orange flowers fetch three pence per pound, those of the sweet orange two pence. At Nice, the market season for such flowers generally lasts upward of a month, and during that time, there are sold from fifteen tons to eighteen tons of flowers daily. A ton of flowers will, by means of distillation, yield say forty ounces of neroli otto, worth twenty guineas; and the residuary water- orange flower water- five guineas. Orange flower fat or butter, and oil, are manufactured to a large extent by the enfleurage and maceration process; it requires about eight pounds of blossoms to enflower one pound of grease, the operation being divided into about thirty repetitions of a small quantity of flowers over or in the same grease. By digesting this orange flower grease in the proportion of six pounds to eight pounds in one gallon of rectified alcohol there is obtained the extract of orange flowers, a handkerchief perfume which is surpassed by no other scent. It is exquisite in itself, and when blended with extracts from other flowers, it composes what is termed a 'bouquet.'

The otto of the orange fruit is procured from the peel by what is called the ecuelle process. The ecuelle is a tinned copper bowl, furnished with concentric rows of short spikes or teeth, and a hollow handle with a gutter from it to the edge of the bowl, through which the liquid from the hollow handle can be poured. In order to obtain the otto, the fruit is rolled by hand over and over the spikes, thus breaking the peel in such a manner that the otto spurts out into the ecuelle, and finds its way into the hollow handle, which, when full, is emptied into another vessel. An inferior quality of otto is procured by rasping and slicing the peel and then pressing out the juice; and this, and the better process just described, are those by which the fruits of all citronworts are divested of their scent-yielding properties, operations that are put into practice to a great extent at Messina, in Sicily.