ERRATA RECEPTA. 393 



Arabic narang. In the Latin of the 13th century this last is repre- 

 sented by arangia. Merchants and others speedily satisfied their 

 common sense that this arangia might with greater propriety be oran- 

 gia, a word conveyiug, by the sound of its first syllable at all events, 

 the idea of a golden-coloured object. — In passing down the Rhone 

 the traveller is interested in beholding, stretched along its left bank, 

 the ancient city of Orange, the place from which the Counts of Nas- 

 sau, early in the 16th century, by virtue of alliances by marriage, 

 added to themselves the title of Counts of Orange. But here, in this 

 local Orange, the vernacularizing process has taken efiect, not upon 

 the Persian or Arabic name of a fruit, but upon the Latinized name 

 of an old Celtic city, Arausio. Out of the coalescence of these two 

 separate vernacularisms into one has arisen the name of a third thing, 

 viz., of a colour destined to hand on to the present day and to far conti- 

 nents a specimen of the power over the unreasoning many, of associa- 

 tion in relation to the hue of a riband or a flag ; a study by the aid of 

 which, as by that of some minute fossil of a by-gone era, we can the 

 more easily realize the proceedings of the factions of the Hippodrome 

 and the feudal strifes within the mediseval cities. The modernized 

 local name of Orange on the Rhone had, very probably, its weight 

 with the French traders in the Levant when they converted the 

 Arabic narang into a word of more vernacular sound. — The aurea 

 mala of the Hesperides are now interpreted to have been simply 

 oranges, which, when very rare, were regarded as rather mysterious 

 cwriosities, just as the eggs of Ostriches used to be. In the time of 

 Friar Jordanus (circa 1830), the orange was not known in Southern 

 Europe. He describes those he saw in India as "lemons sweet as 

 sugar." (V^ide his Mirabilia, p. 15.) 



A species of pear is familiarly known among us as the hon-cretien, 

 "the good Christian ;" a singular name for a fruit. It is a French. 

 Ternacularism for the Greek word pancTiresta. T\\q poire panchresta 

 means " the unexceptionable, every-way excellent pear." — Again, the 

 apple called the rennet bears in reality also a French name ; but we 

 have compelled it to sound English. It is properly rainetfe, " the 

 apple mottled like a frog." — The genneting, or as Lord Bacon gives 

 it, the geniting, is a departure from either June-eatinq or 8t. Jean- 

 eating ; if it be not, as has been suggested, the Scottish family name 

 Janeton. — A fruit not much heard of among us is the medlar ; but 

 its name is not unfamiliar, through a provei4)ial reference to the fact 

 -that it is only then fit to eat when it is in a state of decomposition. 



