THE ORANGE GENUS. 340 



of the Apennines. After the g'ulf of Gaeta is passed, 

 and the shelter of the more elevated mountains of 

 Calabria is obtained, orange groves again make their 

 appearance. 



Tluis the locality of the orange depends fully as 

 much upon situation and soil as upon latitude ; and 

 therefore we need not wonder that, considering the 

 many and varied lands in which it is cultivated, there 

 should be so many varieties of its fruit. There is no 

 absolute reason for supposing that the sweet and the 

 bitter orange 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. Now, 

 if it be true that the bitter orange of Seville 

 came, by successive removals, from the head of the 

 Persian Gulf, along the margin of the salt desert, 

 till it reached the states of Barbary, where it was 

 transplanted into Spain ; if the sweet orange of 

 Malta, Italy and France came through the more 

 fertile parts of Persia and Syria ; and if the orange 

 of India and the Azores came direct from China; it 

 would follow that each should have those qualities 

 which we find in it ; and that the opinion of Galessio 

 is borne out by the only evidence which the case 

 admits. 



Looking at the facts, we are induced to infer, 

 that, if the temperature be sufficiently high for 

 maturing its flavour, the orange is delicious in pro- 

 portion to the uniform salubrity of the air ; and 

 that those high temperatures which force a very 

 large expansion of the fruit are against the fine- 

 ness of its quality. In this respect, we have an op- 

 portunity of contrasting both the oranges of islands 

 and those of continents. St. Michael's, in the Azores, 

 and Malta, are both small islands; the former always 

 exposed to the equalizing breezes, which, from what- 



2 H 



