PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. 187 



fruit. Hence Gallesio infers that the Portuguese were 

 not the first to bring the sweet orange from India, which 

 they reached in 1498, nor from China, which they 

 reached in 1518. Besides, a number of writers in the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century speak of the sweet 

 orange as a fruit already cultivated in Spain and Italy. 

 There are several testimonies for the years 1523, and 

 1525. Gallesio goes no further than the idea that the 

 sweet orange was introduced into Europe towards the 

 beginning of the fifteenth century ; l but Targioni quotes 

 from Valeriani a statute of Fermo, of the fourteenth 

 century, referring to citrons, sweet oranges, etc.; 2 and 

 the information recently collected from early authors by 

 Goeze, 8 about the introduction into Spain and Portugal, 

 agrees with this date. It therefore appears to me prob- 

 able that the oranges imported later from China by the 

 Portuguese were only of better quality than those 

 already known in Europe, and that the common expres- 

 sions, Portugal and Lisbon oranges, are due to this cir- 

 cumstance. 



If the sweet orange had been cultivated at a very 

 early date in India, it would have had a special name 

 in Sanskrit; the Greeks would have known it after 

 Alexander's expedition, and the Hebrews would have 

 early received it through Mesopotamia. This fruit would 

 certainly have been valued, cultivated, and propagated 

 in the Roman empire, in preference to the lemon, citron, 

 and bitter orange. Its existence in India must, there- 

 fore, be less ancient. 



In the Malay Archipelago the sweet orange w9jS 

 believed to come from China. 4 It was but little diffused 

 in the Pacific Isles at the time of Cook's voyages. 5 



We come back thus by all sorts of ways to the idea 

 that the sweet variety of the orange came from China 



1 Gallesio, p. 321. 



2 The date of this statuto is given by Targioni, on p. 205 of the Cenni 

 Storici, as 1379, and on p. 213 as 1309. The errata do not notice this 

 disci*epancy 



8 Goeze, Ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Orangengewachse< Hamburg, 

 1874, p. 26 



4 Rumphius, Amboin., ii. c. 42. Forster, Plantis Esculentis, p. 35. 



