Roses are not doing so well in Bulgaria this year. This is not the casual statement that it may appear. It amounts to a great deal more than a statement, for example, that California's poppies are suffering, that the blue-boimet crop is not up to the standard in Texas, or that the daisies in Maryland are scarcer than usual. A bulletin by the National Geographic society's headquarters here tells why.
"Roses are not merely things of beauty in Bulgaria," says the bulletin. "They constitute a real crop, and mean as much to some parts of the country as cotton means in Georgia, or potatoes in Maine. It is literally true that the rose means bread and butter to thousands of Bulgarian country folk. Great fields of roses are grown that the petals may be made to yield each its infinitesimal share of the roses, the last word—and the most expensive—in perfumery.
"It is in the valleys of the southern slopes of the Balkans that roses have been grown for generations for the perfumery industry, for there the climate, soil, and drainage are just right in normal seasons for this most exacting flower. Before the World War there were probably between 25,000 and 50,000 acres of rose gardens in the Bulgarian 'rose belt,' and the annual yield of the plant was about 150,000 ounces. But perfume was not greatly in demand in the German and Turkish world to which Bulgaria's exports were confined during war time, and roses gave way to the tobacco plant, whose particular fragrance was more appreciable."  Rated by the millions of men under arms. Since the war rose-growing has recovered, but in no postwar year has the acreage climbed above 1,000. Most concentrated product. 