THE OEANGE AND ITS ALLIES. 165 



St. Michael's, fanned by cool Atlantic breezes, produces 

 a small, pale, thin-skinned fruit, with deliciously sweet 

 pulp, while Malta, an island also, yet dry and sultry from 

 its proximity to the African coast, affords a large thick- 

 rinded orange, with high-coloured red pulp, tasting slightly 

 bitter. The Chinese claim the orange as a native fruit, 

 and though there being no reference to it in the travels 

 of the accurate and observant Marco Polo has led some 

 to doubt this, yet it is more likely that he may have over- 

 looked or forgotten it, than that it should have spread so 

 widely there, and no record remain of its introduction 

 had it been transplanted thither. So thoroughly, too, was 

 it formerly indentified with that country, that the sweet 

 fruit was once universally known in Europe as the China 

 Orange, and it still bears that name in America and even 

 in India. 



To return, however, to the history of its progress in 

 this quarter of the globe, it was asserted by Valmont de 

 Bomare, a Portuguese, that the first sweet orange-tree 

 brought to Europe was one till lately still preserved at Lis- 

 bon ; and some other writers even further particularized 

 that it was brought by Jean de Castro, who voyaged in 

 1520 ; and was the only survivor of a number of trees sent 

 as a present from Asia to Conde Mellor, prime .minister of 

 the King of Portugal. G-allo, however, who published a 

 work on agriculture in 1569, speaking of the sweet oranges 

 in the neighbourhood of Salo on Lake Garda, says that 

 they had been cultivated there from time immemorial; 

 and even that most decisive personage, the " oldest inha- 

 bitant," bringing the weight of nonagenarian memory 

 to bear upon the question, could not remember a time 

 when the trees had not been these, which shows that the 

 Lisbon tree could not have been the first or only one 

 brought to Europe at the time it dates from. To the 

 Italians, and to the Genoese in particular, Galessio gives 

 the credit of having been the earliest importers of these 

 trees from the East : before long they began to cultivate 

 them, and in the territory of St. Eemo their number soon 

 became so considerable that in 1520 the municipal council 

 of that city appointed a magistrate specially to superin- 



