THE ORANGE GENUS. 347 



difficult, and certainly the least attended to. One 

 principal source of the difficulty lies in the observer 

 being as much changed as the thing observed. 

 Those who are parched with thirst do not stop to 

 analyze the water, or descant upon the flavour of 

 whatever beverage they may have recourse to for 

 slaking it. The removal of the painful sensation is 

 to them far more delicious than the purity of the 

 most limpid spring, or the flavour of the choicest 

 wine. Just so with man when he is panting under 

 a burning atmosphere: the fruit which is most 

 delicious to him is that which is most cool. This 

 necessary change in the judge, as well as the 

 thing judged of, must never be omitted when we 

 come to compare the fruits of different countries as 

 reported of by those who have enjoyed them there; 

 and we never can be certain of their real merits till 

 we have them decided by the same individual under 

 the same circumstances. To take a case in point : 

 a guava, apart from its rarity, is certainly not in this 

 country any thing comparable to a peach; and yet 

 those who have been in tropical countries talk in rap- 

 tures of the guava, and say that the fruit grown here 

 is inferior and degenerated. But they should bear 

 in mind, that in the tropical countries there is the 

 tropical zest, as well as the tropical flavour. The 

 man who traverses a mountain country in the north, 

 heeds not the glittering fountains that issue from 

 every rock around him; but send him from Suez to 

 Bassora, or from Morocco to Fezzan, and he would 

 remember them with veneration. 



But, again, we have a further confirmation when 

 we compare the continental oranges. The climate 

 of the slopes and valleys of the Estrella, near the 

 lower Tagus, and that of the Maritime Alps, and the 

 Apennines, in Provence and Liguria, are certainly 

 very different from the climate of Andalusia. The 



