cultivated in Italy. 309 



Having the pen in hand, I will add, by way of rendering 

 this communication a little less meagre, such casual notices 

 relative to the cultivation of the siioeet oranges as have occurred 

 to me during our various tours and residence in Italy. 



Many travellers enter Italy with the persuasion that, a-s 

 soon as they have fairly left the Alps behind them, they shall 

 see orange groves in every garden ; and in this expectation 

 the vague information of tourists who speak of places so far 

 north as the Borromean Isles in the Lago Maggiore, and the 

 shores of the Lago di Garda, being thus ornamented, might 

 certainly justify them. But though it is true, as stated, that 

 in these places orange trees are planted in the open ground, 

 these tourists neglect to inform their readers (what I learned 

 from enquiry on the spot last summer) that these trees are 

 regularly defended in winter by temporary sheds of wood or 

 straw, or both ; and, in extremely severe weather, have even 

 artificial heat, as the intelligent gardener of the Isola Bella 

 assured me. The fact is, that, as far as I know, there is no 

 district in the north of Italy where the sweet orange trees can 

 be left unprotected in the open ground in winter except in the 

 neighbourhood of Pisa, Massa, Genoa, and some few other 

 favoured spots on the east coast of the Mediterranean, which 

 enjoy at once the advantages of greater proximity to the 

 sea, and being protected from the north and east winds by 

 the neighbouring range of Apennines. Even at Pisa, if the 

 fruit be expected to be thoroughly ripe, it is necessary to 

 train the trees against walls ; and prudent gardeners there 

 guard them against the frost either by wide projecting copings 

 of straw (which, from experience, they seem to have found a 

 sufficient defence from the effect of terrestrial radiation, with- 

 out any covering in front), or by coverings of mats hung 

 before them. These precautions, however, are not absolutely 

 necessary ; for an Italian gentleman in Pisa informed me that 

 in forty years he had rarely known his unprotected trees 

 receive material injury. Indeed, the thermometer seldom 

 falls at Pisa more than two or three degrees below freezing ; a 

 cold which the sweet orange can bear without injury, as well 

 as very strong hoar frosts, which we have had this spring for 

 several nights in succession, without discolouring the leaves, or 

 causing the ripe oranges to fall oflP. 



At Florence, however, and generally throughout the north 

 of Italy, where the local advantages of Pisa and Genoa do not 

 exist, the sweet orange trees are never exposed to the frost, 

 but are either planted in large pots, and removed under cover 

 in winter, or, if planted in the open ground, as in the Borro- 

 mean Isles, or on the shores of the Lago di Garda, they are 



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