192 Fruits and Fru it- Trees. 



best and finest are selected and cut into slices by 

 machinery moved by water-power. The mass is then 

 heavily pressed, and the juice at once placed in casks 

 ready for shipment. The inferior fruit, and the refuse 

 from the pressing, is made to yield, by other treatment, 

 citric acid, almost as valuable in the arts as the juice is 

 in medicine. Crops are gathered at intervals nearly all 

 the year round ; the heaviest harvest occupies all hands 

 for three months from September onwards. The lime 

 exists in English conservatories, and has often borne 

 fruit, as at Tortworth, Gloucestershire, the seat of Earl 

 Ducie, the tree there cultivated supplying the specimen 

 figured in the Botanical Magazine for 1884, pi. 6,745. 



It is to be regretted that through indifference or 

 something worse, the English name of the celebrated 

 timber-tree, the Tilia Europaa, became corrupted about 

 the year 1700 from "line" into "lime." "Line" itself 

 is not the original, being a shortened form of the Anglo- 

 Saxon lind, which is connected, in turn, with lentus, 

 pliant, and refers to the usefulness of the inner bark as a 

 material for string and cordage. All the old herbals 

 have "line;" it occurs also in early verse, where it 

 rhymes to "thine": 



" Now tell me thy name, good fellow, said he, 

 Under the leaves of lyne." 



The corruption, intrinsically, is a matter of no great 

 moment. But unfortunately it sometimes leads to con- 

 fusion of the lime-tree of the park and the Citrus which 

 supplies lime-juice. 



