THE OBANGE AND ITS ALLIES. 183 



imagine anything more tempting could have grown even 

 in Eden. 



Two other minor divisions of the extensive Hesperidean 

 family are also distinctly distinguished by B/isso, viz., the 

 Lumies reddish-flowered plants, bearing fruit similar in 

 appearance to lemons, but having sweetish juice and 

 Limettiers, resembling the preceding, but having white 

 flowers, and showing two or three other slight differences. 

 One variety of the latter bears the name of Goldsmith's 

 Limettier, its juice being used in India for the cleaning 

 of gold-work. 



It can scarcely be considered as decided whether the 

 AurantiacecB or Citronworts, as the members of the orange 

 family are called in the technology of the Natural System, 

 are indigenous to the New World, though now supera- 

 bounding there in many parts. Orange-trees laden with 

 large sweet fruit were found by Humboldt growing wild 

 on the banks of B-io Cedreno, but in his opinion they 

 were but the remains of an Indian plantation. In Cuba 

 they are so numerous that, in the words of the same 

 mighty traveller, " It would seem as if the whole island 

 had been originally a forest of palm, lemon, and wild 

 orange-trees." The two latter, it appears, grow apart, 

 and the planters distinguish the quality of the soil ac- 

 cording 'as either is found in it, preferring that which 

 produces the Naranjal to that where grows the Lemon. 

 Humboldt believed this wild fruit to have been anterior 

 to the Agrumi of the gardens, transported thither by Eu- 

 ropeans, since the best informed inhabitants asserted that 

 fruit of the cultivated trees brought from Asia preserve 

 their size and sweetness when they become wild ; and the 

 Brazilians affirm that the small bitter orange, which is 

 found wild far from the habitations of man, is of American 

 origin. Prince Maximilian of Wied Nienwied speaks too 

 of a wild orange of Brazil, called Laranjas de terra, but 

 which he thinks must have been introduced. In East 

 Florida, however, a species of orange of very agreeable 

 flavour is extremely abundant, which the testimony of the 

 most scientific authorities pronounces to be decidedly in- 

 digenous. Yet again, G-arcilassio de la Vega, a descen- 



