1 8 2 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



quietly, in their own time, from the bough. Gathered 

 thus early, they " keep " better. The early plucking also 

 ensures a plentiful crop every year, trees which are 

 allowed to retain the fruit till mature yielding good crops 

 only in alternate years. So needful is shelter from the 

 sea-breezes that in the Balearic Islands the orange-groves 

 are all found in the crater-like hollows among the rocks. 

 In Valentia they are defended by belts of olive and 

 carob. Not only does the fecundity augment with age. 

 The fruit of the older trees has a thinner rind, and more 

 juice, and fewer seeds than that of young ones. We must 

 not forget the commercial value of orsuigeflowers. The 

 orange-tree is a mine of odours as well as of fruit-wealth. 

 The perfumers draw from it no fewer than four distinct 

 scents, one from the leaves, two kinds from the flowers, 

 another from the peel. At Nice there is a regular 

 market for the flowers, lasting for a month, during which 

 time fifteen to eighteen tons weight are sold every day, 

 the flowers of the Sweet orange fetching twopence per 

 pound, and those of the Bitter threepence. A ton of 

 the flowers yields by distillation about forty ounces of 

 Neroli, worth twenty guineas, and besides this there is 

 five guineas' worth of orange-flower water. 



From Europe, chiefly, the orange-tree has been carried 

 to every part of the world where the climate allows of the 

 ripening of the fruit. Good oranges, of large size, some- 

 what oval in figure, are now received every winter from 

 Jaffa. What poetry in the very name ! What charm in 

 the associations ! To the rocky and foam-beaten harbour 



