164 OTJB, COMMON" FETJITS. 



which was submitted to the palate of Maitre Jacques 

 may account for his pronouncing such a verdict concern- 

 ing it. " These apples," he continues, " are by the natives 

 called 'oranges.' " Nicholas Specialis, again, who in the 

 14th century wrote a history of Sicily, in recounting the 

 devastations of the Duke of Calabria in the environs of 

 Palermo, remarks that he did not even spare the trees of 

 acid apples, called by the people " arangi" which from, 

 ancient times had embellished the gardens of the royal 

 palace. The bitter variety, however, now called by us 

 " Seville Oranges," were at first the widest spread and 

 most known in Europe ; for, from the 10th to the 15th 

 century no passage in history refers to the sweet orange, 

 all writers mentioning the fruit as one more pleasant to 

 the sight than to the taste ; and Gralessio believes that 

 the two kinds, originally distinct, travelled by different 

 routes, and that they were brought by the Arabs through 

 Egypt and the N". of Africa to Spain, while they trans- 

 ported the sweet sort tHrough Persia into Syria, and 

 thence to Italy and the Si of France. Khind, however, 

 while accepting his statement as to the course of their 

 journey ings, deduces from it that they were probably de- 

 rived from one stock, and considers Gralessio's theory of 

 their transit to be borne out by the fact of the character 

 of the respective fruits coinciding with the probable in- 

 fluence of the ways in which they wandered, and that the 

 one which had been transplanted from one genial climate 

 to another, as in the case of Persia, Syria, and Italy, 

 would be likely to remain sweet, while that which had 

 been borne along the desert to reach Spain might well 

 have become embittered by such a progress; for, according 

 to him, there is no absolute reason for supposing that the 

 sweet and bitter oranges were originally different; and 

 even now they are not so different as two mushrooms of 

 the very same variety, the one produced upon a dry and 

 airy down, and the other upon a marsh. The fruit seems, 

 indeed, to be very susceptible to the influences of soil 

 and climate, its flavour depending greatly upon pure air 

 and a sufficiency of moisture ; a very^ high temperature 

 increasing its size at the expense of its delicacy. Thus 



