'338 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



History, and not a little prone to romance and cre- 

 dulity) to believe and state that these were indigenous 

 to the country, and formed a portion of the glories 

 of the " Holy Land." 



The fables of the profane writers, and the ambi- 

 guity of the descriptions of vegetables in holy writ, 

 helped further to confirm this opinion. As the 

 oranges were of the form of apples, and the colour 

 of gold, it did not require much stretch of imagina- 

 tion to make them the golden apples of the Garden 

 of the Hesperides ; and the only point that je- 

 mained was to settle the locality of that fabled para- 

 dise, which was generally laid in the part of Africa 

 which lies between the mountains of Atlas and 

 the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The au- 

 thority of Moses was called in to confirm the exist- 

 ence of this fruit in Syria, even at the time when the 

 children of Jacob were wandering in the wilderness ; 

 and one of the trees borne in the procession com- 

 manded in the twenty-third chapter of the book of 

 Leviticus, was considered to have been the orange. 

 The mala medica of the Romans, which is mentioned 

 by Virgil, and afterwards by Palladio and others ; 

 the kitron of the Greeks ; and the citrus of Josephws, 

 were all understood to mean the same fruit : and, as 

 has been found to be the case with many other sub- 

 stances, the moderns supposed that, because there 

 was an identity of name, there must be an identity of 

 substance, — never reflecting that the name had been 

 imposed by themselves, and that therefore its identity 

 proved nothing. 



The fable continued, however ; and, though there 

 was a good deal of writing upon the subject, there 

 was no attempt to examine the authorities with that 

 minuteness which the search of truth demanded, till 

 the nineteenth century. The history of this fruit 

 was first carefully traced by Galessio, who published 



