The Orange. 173 



as it were, of manhood. Left to themselves, they have, 

 like animals, to attain maturity before it is possible to 

 generate. 



The origin of the name, as with so many others applied 

 to fruits, is found in the earliest languages of which we 

 have knowledge. According to Max Miiller, it must be 

 sought in some primitive Aryan word, preserved in the 

 Sanscrit nagarunga or nagrunga, and which in Arabic 

 became naranj or narenge. Passing through the medium 

 of the Moors when settled in Spain into mediaeval Latin, 

 in the latter it became anarantium, arantium, and aran- 

 gium. This was afterwards changed, apparently because 

 of the golden hue of the fruit, so remarkable and so 

 brilliant, into aurantium, and from aurantium the tran- 

 sition in France into orenge was easy and natural. 

 Restorations of ancient spellings are never desirable. 

 " Orange " is now fixed for ever. How curiously inter- 

 esting, nevertheless, is it to note this intensely vulnerable 

 character of words, and the mutilations that in the 

 course of ages scores of thousands have undergone. 

 The loss of the ancient initial n has a curious counter- 

 part in the history of the name of the adder, which 

 should properly, by derivation, though upon perfectly 

 different grounds, be "a nadder," Anglo-Saxon n&ddre, 

 Latin natrix. 



No very peculiar characters pertain to the Bitter orange 

 in respect of the foliage and the flowers, excepting that 

 both are more distinctly aromatic than the corresponding 

 parts of the Sweet, though not so when placed beside the 



