178 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



an extract from an account of expenses made by 

 Humbert, the Dauphin, in his voyage to Naples in 

 1336. In the expenses for the return we see the 

 sum of ten tarins the tarin was the thirtieth part 

 of an ounce of Naples for the purchase of twenty 

 orange plants. " Item pro arboribus viginti de 

 plantis arangiorum ad plantandum taren. ' ' X. Hist, 

 of Daup., bk. 2, p. 276.) This, it is true, offers 

 few circumstantial details for fixing the fact that the 

 princes of Dauphiny had really, at that time, an 

 orangery ; but as this historian tells us that Hum- 

 bert bought at Nice twenty roots of oranges for a 

 plantation (ad plantandum), it is to be supposed that 

 he had in his palace at Vienna a place designed to 

 preserve them in the winter ; for without this pre- 

 caution they certainly would have perished in the 

 rigorous climate of Dauphiny (in the south-west part 

 of France. ) 



This luxury must have passed immediately into 

 the capital of France, and though I have not yet 

 found in history indications of these establishments 

 before 1500, it is very probable that they were 

 known there about the middle of the fourteenth 

 century. 



The celebrated tree, preserved still in the orangery 

 at Versailles under the name of Francis First, or 

 Grand Bourbon, was taken from the Constable of 

 Bourbon in the seizure made of his goods in 1523. 

 And this prince, who, it is said, possessed it for 

 eighty years, could not have kept it except in an 



