APPENDIX. 171 



have, however, always been considered vulgar names, 

 and in general the better Latin writers have made 

 use of the generic name, citrus, for designating the 

 Agrumi. 



This usage, followed by most of the writers on 

 history and chorography, often occasions uncertainty 

 and difficulty in researches concerning the begin- 

 ning of this culture in the different countries where 

 these trees have been introduced. The use of it as 

 seasoning for food, brought from Palestine to 

 Liguria, to Provence, and to Sicily, penetrated to 

 the interior of Italy and France. The taste for 

 confections was propagated in Europe with the in- 

 troduction of sugar, and this delicate food became 

 at once a necessary article to men in easy circum- 

 stances, and a luxury upon all tables. It was, 

 above all, as confections that the Agrumi entered 

 into commerce, and we see by the records of Savona 

 that they were sent into cold parts of Italy, where 

 people were very greedy for them. 



After having cultivated these species for the use 

 made of their fruits, they soon cultivated them as 

 ornaments for the gardens. The monks began to 

 fill with these trees the courts of their monasteries, 

 in climates suited to their continual growth, and 

 soon one found no convent not surrounded by 

 them. Indeed, the courts and gardens of these 

 houses show us now trees of great age, and it is 

 said that the old tree, of which we see now a rejeton 

 in the court of the convent of St. Sabina, at Rome, 



