APPENDIX. 163 



already quoted. This conjecture accorded with 

 known events and data. The Arabs invaded Sicily 

 about the beginning of the ninth century (828), the 

 orange was taken from India to Arabia after the 

 year 300 of the Hegira that is to say, early in the 

 ninth century of our era. The citrine apples of 

 Leon d'Ostia dates from 1002, and were regarded 

 as objects rare and precious enough to be offered as 

 gifts to princes. Thus we have between its intro- 

 duction into Arabia and propagation in Sicily an 

 interval of nearly a century. In order to conform 

 to the expression of Massoudi, let us suppose that 

 the orange tree was brought from Arabia some thirty 

 or forty years later say about 330 of Hegira. If 

 we allow fifty years for its propagation in Palestine, 

 Egypt, and Barbary, and finally twenty years for its 

 naturalization in Sicily, we fill precisely the interval 

 between one epoch and the other. 



A passage in the history of Sicily, by Nicolas 

 Specialis, written in the fourteenth century, gives 

 still more probability to this opinion. 



This writer, in recounting the devastation by the 

 army of the Duke of Calabria in 1383, in the 

 vicinity of Palermo, says that it did not spare even 

 the trees of sour apples pommes acides y called by the 

 people arangt, which had adorned since old time, 

 the royal palace of Cubba. (Nicolas Specialis, bk. 



7, c. 17.) 



The name Cubba given to this royal pleasure- 

 house seems to refer to the time of the Arabic rule ; 



