46 



GALLESIO'S TREATISE ON THE CITRUS FAMILY. 



try the damson, the St. Catharine (a pear, Tr.}, 

 the apricot, from Alexandria, and oilier species 

 . indigenous to those regions. 



Sicilians, Genoese, and Provincials transported 

 to Salermo, St. Remo, and Hyeres the lemon 

 and orange trees. Hear what a historian of the \ 

 thirteenth century says to us on this subject ; he 

 hud been in Palestine with the Crusaders, and his 

 word should have great weight. 



Jacques de Vitry expressed himself thus : " Be- 

 sides many trees cultivated in Italy, Genoa, 

 France, and other parts of Europe, we find here 

 (in Palestine) species peculiar to the country, and 

 of which some are sterile and others bear fruit. 

 Here are trees bearing very beautiful apples 

 the color of the citron upon which is distinctly 

 seen the mark of a man's tooth. This has given 

 them the common name of pomine d'Adam 

 (Adam's apple) ; others produce sour fruit, of a 

 disagreeable taste (ponticf), which are called 

 limons. Their juice is 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 

 citrines. These fruits are formed of a triple sub- 

 stance, and have three differing tastes. The first 

 is warm, the second is temperate, the last is cold. 



" Some say that this is the fruit of which God j 

 commanded, in Leviticus : ' Take you the first day 

 of the year tJie fruit of the finest tree? 



" We see in this country another species of cit- 

 rine apples, borne by small trees, and of which j 

 the cool part is less, and of a disagreeable and acid 

 taste ; these the natives call orenges" 



Behold, then, the Adam's apple, the lenio^, 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 cit- 

 ron 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 distin- 

 guished 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 \ve find 

 in European historians and writers upon agricul- 

 ture any mention of these trees. 



Doubtless the Arabians had already naturalized 

 them in Africa and Spain, where the" temperature 

 favored so much their growth. 



Doubtless Liguria is the part of Italy where 

 the culture of the Agrumi has made most progress. 

 We have certain testimony to this in the work 

 of a doctor of medicine of Mantua, writing near 

 the middle of the thirteenth century. He says : 



" The lemon is one of the species of citrine 

 apples, which are four in number. First, citron ; 

 secondly, orange (citrangulum), of which we 

 have spoken belore ; thirdly, the lemon ; fourthly, 

 the fruit vulgarly called lima. These four spe- 

 cies are very well known, principally in Liguria. 

 The lemon is a handsome fruit, of fine odor ; its 

 form is more oblong than that of the orange, 

 and, like the orange, it is full of a sharp, acid juice, 



very proper for seasoning meats. They make of 

 its ilowtTS odoriferous waters, fit for the use of 

 the luxurious." 



" The trees of these four species are very sim- 

 ilar, and all are, thorned. The leaves of the cit 

 ron and lime are larger and less deeply colored 

 than those of the orange or lemon. The lemon 

 is composed of four different substances, as well 

 as the citron, lime, and orange. It has an outer 

 skin, not as deep in color as that of the orange, 

 but which has more of the white; it is hot and 

 biting, thus it shows its bitter taste. The second 

 skin, or pith, between the outer skin and the 

 juice, is white, cold, and difficult to digest. The 

 third substance is its juice, which is sharp, and 

 of a strong acid, which will expel worms, and is . 

 very cold. The fourth is the seed, which, like 

 that of the orange, is warm, dry, and bitier." 

 (See Mat. Silv., Pandcctn Ncdicimc, fol. 125.) 



This testimony of Silvaticus is strengthened 

 by all the authors who have written upon the 

 citrus; there is not one but is convinced that 

 these trees were for a long time very rare in 

 Italy and in France, and that Liguria alone ha* 

 traded in them since they were first known there. 



Sicily and the kingdom of Naples cultivated, 

 perhaps before the Ligurians, the citron and 

 orange trees, but in spite of the advantage of 

 climate, it was only as objects of curiosity, lim- 

 ited to some delightful spots. 



This fact is established by the manner in which 

 most writers of the twelfth century express them- 

 selves on this subject. Hugo Falcandus, who 

 wrote of the exploits of the Normans in Sicily, 

 from 1145 to 1169, saw there lumies and <?ranW, 

 and points them out as singular plants, whose 

 culture was still very rare. (Hugo Falcandus. 

 See Muratori, Herum Italicarum Scriptores.} 



Ebn-Al-Awam, an Arabian writer upon agri 

 culture at Seville, near the end of the twelfth 

 century, and whose work, translated into Span- 

 ish, was published at Madrid in 1802, speaks as 

 if the culture were very much extended in Spain. 



Abd-Allatif, who was cotemporary with the 

 last named author, expresses, himself in like 

 manner, and describes also a number of varieties 

 cultivated in his time in Egypt ; a circumstance 

 showing that these trees had greatly multiplied. 



Their progress was slower in Italy and France. 

 It appears that the lemon tree, brought first into 

 these parts as a variety of citron, was for a long 

 time designated by European writers under the 

 generic name of citrus, although in Italy and the 

 south of France the people had known it from 

 the beginning under the proper name of limon ; 

 a name which has come down to us without sub- 

 mitting to any change. 



In fact, we find it in botanical works called 

 citrus limon, or mala limonia, and sometimes cit- 

 rus medica. The last was indefinitely used to 

 designate lemon, citron, and orange, and very 

 often the genus citr-us* 



* It is not until the middle of the sixteenth century that 

 we begin to find in Latin authors the differing species of 

 cilnts under different names ; but one sees that this no- 

 menclature was not well settled in the language of the 

 learned. 



Judocp Hondio, in his Nora Italics Hodiernce Descriptio, 

 printed in 1626, says the plain of St. Kemo was covered 

 with citreis, mtdicis, and limonibm. He begins to give the 

 lemon its own name, and to distinguish it from citron : 



