AGRUMI. 



Agrumi culti\'atcd in Itah' ma\' be seen in this garden 

 brought together within a small compass. These trees 

 are so inseparabh- connected in our minds \\ith southern 

 skies that the land of Ital\- is ever pictured in our dreams 

 as permeated with the fragrance ol orange blossom and 

 gleaming with their golden fruit. Goethe's beautiful 

 "Mignonlied", lines which have expressed for all time 

 the ^'earning of the northerner for sunnier climes, has no 

 doubt contributed much to this idea. But though the 

 Agrumi may appear to form part of the Italian landscape 

 they nevertheless were not introduced there till compara- 

 ti\'eh' late ancl have remained conlined to certain districts. 

 Their home is in distant Asia, in India and Southern 

 China, and the\- made their \\a\' to Europe through the 

 Levant. The name '•Citrum" was first applied hv the 

 ancients to the wood of CaUitris qiiadrivalvis as ma\' be 

 seen in the "Traile du Citrus" b\ (.yallesio (1811), the 

 "Histoire naturelle des oranges" h\ Risso (1801), \'ictor 

 Hehn's "Kulturpfianzen und I laustiei'e", the "Origin of 

 Cultivated Plants" \)\ Alphonse de G'andoUe, and lasth' 

 Fliickiger's "Pharmakognosie", not to prention older sour- 

 ces of information. A well grown specimen of this north 

 African conifer ma\ also be seen in Sir Thomas Ilan- 

 bur^-'s gardens. It ^'ielcls ''Gum Sandarac", a resin which 

 exudes from the bark in hard, white drops and trickles 

 from the trunk when injured. Grained slabs of this per- 

 fumed wood and transverse sections of the trunk were 

 highly prized by the Romans. Thev were coveted ob- 

 jects among the splendour-loving Roman nobles, and rea- 

 lized high prices. vSome of these slabs measured more 



