4 THE TREES AND SHRUBS [LECT. 



duced to settle. Even of those genera which afford 

 edible fruits, not more than one or two species 

 possess the qualities which fit them for man's sub- 

 sistence ; and in the natural course of events, cen- 

 turies must have elapsed before their useful quali- 

 ties were discriminated, and the species selected 

 had multiplied sufficiently to be diffused over the 

 countries even in which they were indigenous. 



The trees above mentioned, indeed, although 

 exotics, are perfectly well adapted, not only to 

 Italy, but even to countries much less favourably 

 circumstanced as to climate, but the same cannot 

 be said of the Mains Assyria or Mains medica, to 

 which Pliny alludes. 



This tree has been supposed by Sprengel and 

 others to be the Citron, or Citrus medica, but a late 

 writer, Fraas, contends that it agrees with the 

 Shaddock, both because this tree is a native of 

 the East, whereas the Citron comes from North 

 Africa ; and also because it is used, as the Mains 

 Assyria was, for perfuming clothes by the aromatic 

 fragrance of the oil with which it abounds. Be 

 that as it may, the fruit was not eaten, being, as 

 Virgil describes it, " Tristis sued, tardiqne saporis" 



The true Orange, on the contrary, does not appear 

 to have been introduced into Italy till the ninth cen- 

 tury after Christ. Alphonse Decandolle a regards it 

 as a variety of the Citron, which according to him 

 is a native of China, and was gradually transported 

 to the West by the Arabians and others. The 



" Geographic des Plantes. 



