The Orange Family. 163 



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The orange is one of the group of fruits in which we 

 find also the lemon, the citron, the lime, and the less 

 important, but still valuable, shaddock and kumquat. 

 They belong to the botanical order Aurantiaceae, an 

 assemblage of about sixty species of small but very 

 comely trees and shrubs, laurel-like, evergreen, natives 

 almost exclusively of the warmer parts of Asia, and 

 recommended by rich variety of good qualities. About 

 half a dozen of the sixty species constitute the genus 

 Citrus, and it is among these that we find the famous 

 fruit-bearers of the order ; though not the only ones that 

 are able to please the palate, several producing nice little 

 berries which perhaps would improve under cultivation. 

 Nor, though pre-eminent as the fruit-bearing genus, must 

 we take Citrus as the type of the order, or its best 

 representative. It differs from most of the other genera 

 in several important particulars, and very notably in the 

 leaves, the stamens, and the ovary, not to mention the 

 fruit itself, which in all the other genera is fleshy instead 

 of juicy. The specialty in the leaves is that while the 

 rule in the Aurantiaceae is that these organs shall be 

 compound, here in the genus Citrus there is but a single 

 leaflet, so large, however, that it looks like a fully 

 developed simple leaf. That it is really the terminal 

 leaflet of what might have been a trifoliolate or a pinnate 

 leaf, is shown by the articulation of the blade to the 



