Discussion on the Origin of Varieties. 225 



The Glossary also says that Hehn supposed the 

 sweet orange was first brought by the Portuguese into 

 Europe from China in 1548. 



Sir C. F. Bonham, Secretary to the British Legation, 

 Lisbon, has very courteously obtained the following 

 information for me. Writing from Cintra, 2nd Sept. 

 1886, he says : 



" I now forward to you all the information which 

 Sir Francis Cook has been able to get from old books 

 in his possession on the subject of oranges. He is a 

 man of considerable knowledge of plants, and pos- 

 sesses a large estate in this neighbourhood. In the 

 course of conversation on the subject, he has told me 

 that the sweet orange, citrus aurantium of Portugal,* is 

 undoubtedly of Chinese origin; that the date of its 

 introduction into Portugal is somewhat uncertain ; 

 that he has much reason to believe it was introduced 

 into Portugal by D. Joao de Castro, about the year 

 1480, and planted on the terraces of Ponha Verde (a 

 place near here), where its descendants still exist. 



In order that the suntara orange of India should 

 have become so widespread on the N.E. border of 

 the Peninsula, it is reasonable to suppose that either it 

 must have been indigenous there, or introduced long 

 before the dates given above of the introduction of the 

 sweet orange into Cintra. The probability is that 

 it was brought from China or Cochin China, across 

 the N.E. border ^prehistoric times. 



I have left no stone unturned in order to get at 

 the bottom of the origin of this suntara orange, and 

 possibly at the derivation of its name. It would be 

 as well to mention all the known variations of this 

 name. In the Khasia hills it is not clear that it is 

 commonly known by this name. There, in Bengali, it 

 * C. aurantium, Gall. 



Q 



