CHAPTER III. 



THE MALTA OR PORTUGAL ORANGES. 



IT should be understood that I give the above 

 names to this type of oranges, not because all those 

 I have seen have been introduced from Malta or 

 Portugal, but because these are simple names of 

 this variety of orange. In India, moreover, there is 

 no indigenous name for this type of orange, as 

 there is for those of the suntara type. This would 

 point to the notion that oranges of the Malta or 

 Portugal type in India are of foreign origin. More- 

 over, in the time of Risso the blood orange was known 

 in Paris as the Orange de Matte, while the bloodless 

 variety of the same type was- known as the Orange 

 de Portugal. 



Tien's Manual of Colloquial Arabic for Orange 

 gives burduqdn or berdqdn, which are evidently cor- 

 ruptions of PortugdL 



The Latin name given to this type of orange by 

 Gallesio is Citrus aurantium sinense, which would 

 indicate that the notion then was that it originally 

 came from China. 



I am unable to identify any of the oranges mentioned 

 in Baber's memoirs with this type of orange,* unless 

 it be his ndranj\ which he compares, as I said in 

 another place, with the sweet oranges of Lemghanat, 



* Vide Appendix, No. i. 



C 2 



