162 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



Balunense. The Imperial Library contains several 

 manuscripts of this dictionary. 



I had thought to have found proof that the lemon 

 was known by the Arabs in the ninth century, hav- 

 ing seen in a history of India and China, dated 238 

 of the Hegira (A.D. 860), of which a French transla- 

 tion was printed in Paris in 1718, the writers had 

 spoken of the lemon as a fruit found in China. 

 But M. de Sacy, who examined the original, 

 ascertained that the word limon was inserted by the 

 translator. In the Arabian text one finds only that 

 of otrodj, which signifies merely citron. Therefore 

 this history, far from proving that the Arabs knew 

 the lemon tree at this period, proves quite the con- 

 trary. It was not until the tenth century of our era 

 that this warlike people enriched with these trees the 

 garden of Oman (in South-eastern Arabia), whence 

 they were propagated in Palestine and Egypt. From 

 these countries they passed into Barbary and Spain, 

 perhaps also into Sicily. 



Leon of Ostia tells us that in 1002 a prince of 

 Salerna presented citrine apples (poma citrina) to the 

 Norman princes who had rescued him irom the 

 Saracens. 



The expression poma citrina, used by this author, 

 appears to me to designate fruit like the citron rather 

 than the citron itself, then known under the name 

 of citri, or of mala medica. 



It is thus that we should recognize the orange in 

 the citron rond spoken of by Massoudi in a passage 



