74 Oranges and Lemons of India. 



had any g hard in it. He said, no. I then came to the 

 following conclusion : Baber, writing in a language 

 which had no gaf wrote the name of the lemon 

 " gulgul " kulkul. Of course the short vowels are 

 omitted, and he wrote klkl. This might be interpreted 

 either as kulkul or kilkil. The translators, probably 

 not knowing this kind of lemon, read it kilkil. It is 

 a very large lemon, and the Punjab gulgul, shown on 

 pi. 1 86, figs, e and/; corresponds almost exactly with 

 that described by Baber, viz. : " In shape it is like a 

 goose's egg, but does not, like the egg, taper away at 

 the two extremities. The skin of this species is 

 smooth like that of the sengtereh. It has a remark- 

 able quantity of juice." 



Another lemon mentioned by Baber is the 

 amratphal* or sweet lemon, which moderns univer- 

 sally call sherbetee. They say that the latter name, 

 the amratphal and the mitha nimboo, all mean one, 

 and the same variety, the sweet lemon, and which is 

 mostly called sweet lime. Under the heading of 

 amratphal the translators of these memoirs state that 

 Humayoon said that " Its juice, though not ex- 

 tremely sweet, yet is very pleasant. Its acidity 

 when unripe resembles that of the orange. While 

 yet very acid its sourness affects the stomach, but in 

 course of time it ripens and becomes sweet." 



I have a suspicion that Humayoon made some 

 mistake. The amratphal or sherbetee is acidless from 

 beginning to end. I have not been able to find that any 

 native knows of any kind of sherbetee lemon, f which 

 is acid when unripe, and sweet when ripe. The young 

 unripe sherbetee I tasted was as sweet or as acidless 



* Appendix, No. i (Ji). 



t From Calcutta a sour Citrus came ticketed sherbetee pati. 

 ( Vide pi. 207, figs. / and/.) 



