RISE AND PROGRESS OF ORANGE CULTURE. 11 



sued in Florida, in raising this justly celebrated fruit, a 

 brief glance at its origin may not be amiss. 



An earnest naturalist, Galessio, was the first to trace its 

 history with any degree of authenticity, and the result of 

 his careful researches he published to the world in his 

 "Traite du Citrus," issued in Paris in the year 1811. 



According to this author the Arabs, penetrating further 

 into the interior of India than any foreign nation had done 

 before, discovered the orange family flourishing there, and 

 held in high esteem by the natives. 



From this point the Arabs conveyed the sweet, now 

 called China oranges, into Persia and Syria ; and the bitter 

 orange, now called the Seville, found its way into Arabia, 

 Egypt, the North of Africa, and Spain. From these points 

 the orange traveled into other countries, notably China, 

 and in this latter empire it so flourished and spread far 

 and wide, that by and by it came to be a fiction believed 

 in by Europeans that the orange was indigenous to China. 



Galessio shows, however, that the so - called ' ' China 

 orange" is by no means a spontaneous production of that 

 country, and his statement is further corroborated by the 

 absence of all mention of this fruit in the exceedingly 

 minute and circumstantial account given by the father 

 of modern travelers, Marco Polo, of the productions of 

 China. 



The orange was not known to the ancients, either in 

 Europe or Syria, and the palm of its introduction to the 

 world must be accorded to the Arabians, whose anxiety for 

 the extension of medical and agricultural knowledge was 

 almost equal to their zeal for the propagation of the Koran. 



The sweet orange which they carried to Spain spread 

 thence into Portugal, Sicily, St. Michael, and the Mediter- 

 ranean islands, and the West Indies. 



In each and all of these various places has the difference 



