PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 179 



spherical frnit, whose highly aromatic rind is covered 

 with lunips, and of which the juice is neither abundant 

 nor very acid. According to Brand is, it was called 

 vijapura in Sanskrit. 



2. Citrus T.iedica Limonum {citronnier in French, 

 lemon in English). Fruit of average size, not spherical, 

 and abundant acid juice. 



3. Citrus nfiedica acida (C. acida, Roxburgh). Lime in 

 English. Small flowers, fruit small and variable in shape, 

 juice very acid. According to Brandis, the Sanskrit name 

 was jamihira. 



4. Citrus medica Limetta (G. Limetta and C. Lumia 

 of Risso), with flowers like those of the preceding variety, 

 but with spherical fruit and sweet, non-aromatic juice. 

 In India it is called the siveet lime. 



The botanist Wight affirms that this last variety is 

 wild in the Nilgheny Hills. Other forms, which answer 

 more or less exactly to the three other varieties, have 

 been found wild by several Anglo-Indian botanists-^ in 

 the warm districts at the foot of the Himalayas, from 

 Garwal to Sikkim, in the south-east at Chittagong and 

 in Burmah, and in the south-west in the western Ghauts 

 and the Satpura Mountains. From this it cannot be 

 doubted that the species is indigenous in India, and even 

 under different forms of prehistoric antiquity. 



I doubt whether its area includes China or the Malay 

 Archipelago. Loureiro mentions Citrus medica in Cochin- 

 China only as a cultivated plant, and Bretschn eider tells 

 us that the lemon has Chinese names which do not 

 exist in the ancient writings, and for which the written 

 characters are complicated, indications of a foreign 

 species. It may, he says, have been introduced. In 

 Japan the species is only a cultivated one.^ Lastly, 

 several of Rumphius' illustrations show varieties culti- 

 vated in the Sunda Islands, but none of these are con- 

 sidered by the author as really wild and indigenous to the 

 country. To indicate the locality, he sometimes used 



^ Royle, HI. Himal., p. 129 ; Brandis, Forest Flora, p. 52 ; Hooker, 

 Fl. of Brit. Ind., i. p. 514. 



2 Franchet and Savatier, Enum. Plant, Jap., p. 129. 



