THE ORANGE. 



servation of orange trees, from which one would 

 be led to conclude that the trees at Beddlngton, 

 with their ample protection of a movable cov- 

 ering in winter, had not been in existence then. 

 "The orange tree," says he, "hath abiden, with 

 some extraordinary branching and budding of 

 it, when as neither citron nor lemon trees would 

 by any means be preserved for any long time. 

 Some keepe them in square boxes, and lift them 

 to and fro by iron hooks on the sides, or cause 

 them to be rowled on trundels or small wheels 

 under them, to place them in an house, or close 

 galerie, for the winter time : others plant them 

 against a bricke wall in the ground, and defend 

 by a shed of boardes, covered with scare cloth in 

 the winter; and by the warmth of a stove, or such 

 other thing, give them some comfort in the colder 

 times; but no tent or meane provision will pre- 

 serve them." The orange trees at Versailles are, 

 during the winter, wheeled into warm places 

 under the terrace; and the same plan is pursued 

 with respect to some fine orange trees at Windsor, 

 which were presented by the late king of France. 

 At Hampton Court there are many orange trees, 

 some of which are stated to be three hundred years 

 old. They are generally moved into the open air 

 about the middle of June, when the perfume of 

 their blossoms is most delicious. Orange and 

 lemon trees havebeen cultivated in the open air in 

 England. For a hundred j^ears, in a few gardens 

 of the south of Devonshire, they have been 

 seen, trained as peach ti'ees against walls, and 

 sheltered only with mats of straw during the 

 winter. The fruit of these is stated to be as 

 large and fine as any from Portugal. 



At the tune when the people of Europe first 

 visited the Levant in great numbers, that is, dur- 

 ing the crusades for the recovery of Syria from 

 the dominion of the Saracens, oranges were found 

 abundant in that country. Though they were 

 in reality cultivated trees, their numbei-, and the 

 beauty and goodness of their fi-uit, naturally 

 caused the adventurers (who were not very con- 

 versant with natural history, and not a little 

 prone to romance and credulity) to believe and 

 state that these were indigenous to the country, 

 and formed a portion of the glories of the "Holy 

 Land." 



The fables of the profane Avi'iters, and the am- 

 biguity of the descriptions of vegetables in Holy 

 Writ, helped further to confirm this opinion. As 

 the oranges were of the form of apples, and the 

 colour of gold, it did not require much stretch 

 of imagination to make them the golden apples of 

 the garden of the Hesperides; and the only point 

 that remained was to settle the locality of that 

 fabled paradise, which was generally laid in the 

 part of Africa which lies between the moun- 

 tains of Atlas and the southern shore of the 

 Mediten-anean. The authority of Moses was 

 called in to confinn the existence of this fruit in 



Syria, even at the time wlien the children of 

 Jacob were wandering in the wilderness; and 

 one of the trees borne in the procession com- 

 manded in the twenty-third chapter of the book 

 of Leviticus, was considered to have been the 

 orange. The mala medica of the Romans, which 

 is mentioned by Virgil, and afterwards by Pal- 

 ladio and others; the Mtron of the Greeks; and 

 the citrus of Josephus, were all understood to 

 mean the same fruit : and, as has been found to 

 be the case with many other substances, the 

 moderns supposed that, because there was an 

 identity of name, there must be an identity of 

 substance, never reflecting that the name had 

 been imposed by themselves, and that therefore 

 its identity proved nothing. 



The fable continued, however; and, though 

 there was a good deal of writing upon the sub- 

 ject, there was no attempt to examine the au- 

 thorities with that minuteness which the search 

 of truth demanded, till the nineteenth century. 

 The history of this fruit was first carefully traced 

 by Galessio, who published his Traite du Citrus, 

 at Paris, in 1811. He maintains that the orange, 

 instead of being found in the north of Africa, in 

 Syria, or even in Media, whence the Romans 

 must have obtained their " Median apples," was 

 not in that part of India which is watered by 

 the Indus at the time of Alexander the Great's 

 Indian expedition, as it is not mentioned by 

 Nearchus among the fmits and productions of 

 that country. It is not mentioned either by 

 Arrian, by Diodorus, or Pliny; and even so late 

 as the year 1300, Pietro di Cuescengi, a senator 

 of Bologna, who wrote on agriculture and vege- 

 table productions, does not take the least notice 

 of the orange. 



The first distinct mention of oranges is by the 

 Arabs; and Avicenna (book v.) not only des- 

 cribes oleum de citrangida (oil of oranges) and 

 oleum de citrangidorum seminibus (oil of orange 

 seeds,) but speaks of citric acid (salt of lemons,) 

 which is contained in all the genus, though more 

 abundantly in that species from which it got its 

 common English name. 



According to Galessio, the Arabs, when they 

 penetrated to India, found the orange tribes there, 

 further in the interior than Alexander had pene- 

 trated; and they brought them thence by two 

 routes : the sweet ones, now called China oranges, 

 through Persia to Syria, and thence to the shores 

 of Italy and the south of France; and the bitter 

 oranges, called in the commerce of England, Se- 

 ville oranges, by Arabia, Egypt, and the north 

 of Africa to Spain. 



It does not appear that the orange was origin- 

 ally a Chinese fruit, as it is not mentioned by 

 Marco Polo, the father of modern travellers, who 

 is so circumstantial in describing aU the other 

 wonders of that country. 



Now these facts certainly go far to show that 



