174 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



used for seasoning food, because it is cool, pricks 

 the palate, and provokes appetite. We also see 

 cedars of Lebanon, very fine and tall, but sterile. 

 There is a species of cedar called cedre maritime, 

 whose plant is small but productive, giving very 

 fine fruits, as large as a man's head. Some call 

 them citrons, or pommes citrons. These fruits are 

 formed of a triple substance, and have three differ- 

 ent tastes. The first is warm, the second is tem- 

 perate, the last is cold. Some say that this is the 

 fruit of which God commanded in Leviticus : 

 ' Take you the first day of the year the fruit of the 

 finest tree. ' We see in this country another species 

 of citrine apples, borne by small trees, and of which 

 the cool part is less and of a disagreeable and acid 

 taste ; these the natives call orenges." 



Behold, then, the Adam's apple, the lemon, the 

 citron, and the bigarade found in Palestine by the 

 Crusaders, and regarded as new trees foreign to 

 Europe ! 



This passage does not accord, as far as the citron 

 is concerned, with what Palladius says. He tells 

 us that this plant was, in his time, cultivated in 

 Sardinia and in Sicily. But we see, by Jacques de 

 Vitry, that the citron of Palestine was distinguished 

 by the extraordinary size of its fruit, equal to a 

 man's head, and it must be that this last was a 

 variety unknown to Europe. 



It is, indeed, only since this epoch that we find 

 in Euiopean historians and writers upon agriculture 



