CHAPTER VII.

FRUITS COMMON TO TEMPERATE AND TROPICAL CLIMATES. THE ORANGE GENUS.

We are about to take a general and rapid view of the fruits which are indigenous to other climates. Many of these are scarcely known in this country except as curiosities; while others are partially cultivated as objects of luxury. Particular fruits, which are scarcely ever seen here in their natural state, such as the date and the banana, supply largely to the necessities of great masses of mankind; and they are thus intimately connected with their moral and social condition. Of the more luxurious fruits, such as the mango and the durion, it is probable that, in the course of time, we may obtain possession of them in the same way that we possess the pine-apple,-that is, by the judicious application of artificial heat. Sir Joseph Banks thought that improvements in the art of forcing fruits would render this period not at all distant. He says, "It does not require the gift of prophecy to foretell, that ere long the akee and the avocado pear of the West Indies; the flat peach, the mandarine orange, and the litchi of China; the mango, the mangostan, and the durion of the East Indies; and possibly other valuable (tropical) fruits, will be frequent at the tables of opulent persons; and some of them, perhaps, in less than half a century, be offered for sale on every market-day in Covent-Garden*."

*Hort. Trans., vol. i.

It is certainly by no means improbable that, by further improvements in the art of gardening, we may be enabled to diversify our vegetable stores by many of those choice productions of the tropical countries which are at present known only as curiosities to a few. Many tropical plants, which, at their first introduction, were kept entirely in stoves, are now planted out, and can bear the rigour of our ordinary winters, without any abatement of growth or diminution of beauty; and from this we may reasonably hope that some tropical fruits may in time be so far assimilated to our climate as to ripen in our ordinary summers.

But, while the greater number of tropical fruits are of little value to the many, there is a fruit, originally a native of tropical regions, and naturally growing only in countries of a higher temperature than our own, which commerce has made our property in a very remarkable degree. The orange may be procured at little more cost than that of the commonest of our domestic fruits; while it is the most refreshing and healthy, perhaps, of all the fruits of the warm countries. It has thus become a peculiar blessing to us; for while it offers a gratification within the reach of the poorest, it is so superior to other fruits, that it cannot be despised for its cheapness, even by the richest. The duty upon oranges is 68,000l. per annum, at the rate of 2s. 6d. for a package not exceeding 5000 cubic inches. Assuming the cubical contents of an orange as ten inches, there are 500 in each package-and thus we see that 272,000,000 of this fruit are annually imported, allowing about a dozen per annum to every individual of the population.

This extraordinary consumption of a production which is brought here from very distant places, is a

natural consequence of certain qualities which fit the orange, in a remarkable degree, for being the universal fruit of commerce. If we would have foreign figs and grapes, they must be dried, for the undried grapes, which we bring even from the short distance of Portugal, are flat and vapid; the tamarind is a liquid preserve; the guava must be made into a jelly; the mango destined for us requires to be pulled before it is ripe, and is pickled; the date must be dried; and the cocoa nut becomes when here consolidated and indigestible. With regard to the orange, man may have it fresh in every region of the world, and at almost every season of the year. The aromatic oil and the rind preserve it from the effects both of heat and of cold; and the acridity of the former renders it proof against the attacks of insects. It is true that oranges rot, like other fruits; but that does not happen for a long time, if the rind is uninjured, and they are kept from moisture, and so ventilated as not to ferment.

Most of the oranges and lemons intended for exportation are gathered while they are still green; for if the fruit were allowed to become mature it would spoil in the transport. Lemons are sometimes preserved by being impregnated with sea-water. The gathering of oranges and lemons for the British market generally occupies from the commencement of October to the end of December. Oranges are not fully ripe till the spring has commenced. It is remarkable that the orange trees from which the fruit is gathered green bear plentifully every year; while those upon which the fruit is suffered to ripen afford abundant crops only on alternate years*.

The Citrons are one of the most interesting families of plants. They are all originally natives of the

Dict. des Sciences Naturelles.

warmer parts of Asia, though they have been long introduced into the West Indies, the tropical parts of America, the Atlantic Isles, the warmer countries of Europe, and even Britain, where they bear the open air during the summer, and, in favourable situations, do not need artificial heat, if kept from the frost through the winter. They are all either small trees or shrubs, with brown stems, green twigs and leaves, bearing some resemblance to those of the laurel. We cannot, however, judge of the size of the orange-tree by the specimens we ordinarily see in England. In parts of Spain there are some old orange trees forming large timber*; in the convent of St. Sabina, at Rome, there is an orange-tree thirty-one feet high, which is said to be six hundred years old; and at Nice, in 1789, there was a tree which generally bore five or six thousand oranges, which was more than fifty feet high, with a trunk which required two men to embrace itt. The size depends much upon the age of the plant.

There are four distinct species:-The Lemon, or Citron, the Orange, the Mandarin Orange, and the Shaddock; and of the orange and lemon there are many varieties. They are, even in the East, where they are natives, not a little capricious in their growth; the fruit, and even the leaves, frequently altering, so that it is not always easy to say which is a distinct species, and which only a variety. They continue flowering during nearly all the summer, and the fruit takes two years to come to maturity; so that, for a considerable period of each year, a healthy tree has every stage of the production, from the flowerbud to the ripe fruit, in perfection at the same time.

The Citron, when growing wild, is a thorny tree, about eight feet high, with leaves of a pale green: the flowers are white, and have a very agreeable odour. The fruit is oblong, five or six inches long, with a rough yellow rind; the outer part of it contains (as is the case with most of the family) a considerable quantity of highly aromatic and inflammable oil; the pulp is white and edible, but very acid, and preferred when prepared as a sweetmeat. Of a particular variety of the citron a conserve is made which is in great demand by the Jews, who use it in their Feast of Tabernacles. With a little artificial heat in winter, the citron comes to as much perfection in England as in Spain or Italy. There are two varieties noticed-the common and the sweet, but whether they have been produced by natural difference or culture is not known.

The Lemon grows naturally in that part of India which is situated beyond the Ganges; but its transmigration to Europe belongs to the invasion of the West by those mighty caliphs, who, from the heart of Southern Asia, extended their conquests to the foot