The Malta or Portugal Oranges. 25 



Therefore, taking the want of an indigenous name 

 in India for this type of orange and its varieties, it 

 would appear that when the Arabs carried the Seville 

 from Western India further west, and finally into Spain, 

 this sweet variety had not yet reached Western India, 

 or at all events those parts of India then known to the 

 Arabs. 



A. de Candolle, quoting from Gallesio, gives some 

 interesting historical data regarding this orange. He 

 first proves that the orange trees brought from India by 

 the Arabs into Palestine, Egypt, the south of Europe, 

 and the coast of Africa, were not the sweet-fruited ones. 

 Up to .the fifteenth century Arab books and chronicles 

 only mention bitter or sour oranges. However, when 

 the Portuguese arrived in the islands of Southern Asia, 

 they found the sweet orange, and apparently it had not 

 previously been unknown to them. The Florentine who 

 accompanied Vasco de Gama, and who published an ac- 

 count of the voyage, says : "there are plenty of oranges, 

 but all sweet." Neither this writer nor subsequent tra- 

 vellers expressed surprise at the pleasant taste of the 

 fruit. Hence Gallesio infers that the Portuguese were 

 not the first to bring the sweet orange from India, 

 which they reached in 1498, nor from China, which 

 they reached in 1518. Besides, a number of writers 

 in the beginning of the sixteenth century speak of the 

 sweet orange as a fruit already cultivated in Spain and 

 Italy. There are several testimonies for the years 

 1523 and 1525. Gallesio goes no further than the 

 idea that the sweet orange was introduced into Europe 

 towards the beginning of the fifteenth century, but 

 Targioni quotes from Valeriani a statute of Fermo, of 

 the fourteenth century, referring to citrons, sweet 

 oranges, &c., and the information recently collected 

 from early authors by Goeze, about its introduction 



