148 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Among these fruit-trees is one reproduced below (fig. 14). 

 No one, I think, would interpret it into any other than a Lemon 

 or Citron tree, and the artist makes it 

 clearer by painting the fruits separately 

 above it. It has rounded fruits also, but 

 these often occur among Citrons and 

 Lemons. 



This is not all ; for during the ninth 

 Oriental Congress, held in London in Sep- 

 tember 1892, I saw some copies of Egyptian 

 wall-paintings in frames in the reception- 



Fig 14 —From wall r00m ' ^ n one °^ tnem there was a pro- 

 painting in the Temple cession of men carrying baskets of Grapes 



of Karnak built by and other things. One of these things was 

 Thotmes III. in the v . ° 



15th century b.c. that m a basket shown in the accompanying 

 (Babylonian Record.) ngure (fig. 15). I do not think that this can 

 be other than a fingered Citron (fig. 16), and if we compare 

 it with Penzig's fingered Lemon, we are not left in much doubt 

 about what it was meant for (fig. 17). 



Fig. 16.— Fingered Citron, from Gar- 

 deners' 1 Chronicle (reduced). (Babylonian 



Fig. 15.— Basket con- 

 taining some rare fruit, 

 from wall-painting of El 

 Kab, Egypt. (Babylo- 

 nian Record.) Record.) 



So that we have something approaching unmistakable evidence 

 showing that the Citron-tree was known to the ancient Egyptians 

 something near thirty-three centuries ago ! And, making allow- 

 ance for the fact that the fruits on the Egyptian walls are 

 pamted, whilst those on the Assyrian walls are sculptured, there 

 can be no reasonable doubt but that the figure shown in Mr. 

 Layard's " Nineveh " (fig. 18) is carrying a fingered Citron 

 roughly and conventionally delineated, thus proving the Citron 

 to have been known in Media and Assyria, as well as in Egypt, 

 in very ancient times. 



