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    412 FRUITS IN THEIR SEASON.

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Summer's Light Fruits Have Long Since Fl...

    Spain , while they transported the sweet sort through Persia into Syriaand thence to Italy and the south of France . Rhind ,

    however , , while accepting his statement as to the course of their journeyings , deduces from it that they were probably derived from

    one stock , and considers Galessio ' s theory of their transit to be borne out by the fact of the character of the respective fruits ,

    coinciding * with the probable influence of the ways in which they wandered ; and that the one which had been transplanted from one

    genial climate to another , as in the case of Persia , Syria , and Italy , would be likely . to remain sweet ; while that which had been borne

    from the head of the Persian Gulf along the desert , to reacB . Spain , might well have become embittered by such a progress ; for ,

    according to him , " there is no absolute reason for sup _23 osing that the sweet and bitter orange were originally different ; and even now

    they are not so different as two mushrooms of the very same variety , the one produced upon a dry and airy down , and the

    other upon a marsh . " The fruit seems , indeed , to be very , susceptible to the influences of soil _, and climateits flavor dej > ending

    greatly upon pure air , and a sufficiency of , moisture ; a very high temperature increasing its size at the expense of its delicacy . Thus ,

    St . Michael's , fanned by cool Atlantic breezes , j _> rocluces a small pale , thin-skinned fruit , with deliciously sweet pulp ; while Malta ,

    an island also , yet dry and sultry from its proximity to the African ' coastaffords a largethick-rinded orangewith red pulptasting

    . slihtl , bitter . It is , a curious circumstance , toothat beneath , the artificial gy earth ( brought originally from Sicil , y ) , which forms the

    soil of Malta , , there gathers continually a kind , of crust , either the decomposition of the rocky substratum , or the accumulation of

    saline particles brought hy the pestilent sirocco ; and if the earth _, be not periodically trenchedand this crust removedthe trees

    cease to bear , or their fruit , becomes bitter and unwh , olesome . The Chinese claim the orange as a native fruitand . though the

    , fact of there being no reference to it in the travels of the accurate and observant Marco Polo has led some to doubt this claim , yet it

    is more likely that he may have overlooked or forgotten it , than that it should have spread so widely thereand no record remain of

    , its introduction had it been really transplanted thither . So thoroughly , too , was it formerly identified with that country , that the

    sweet fruit was once universally known in Europe as the " China orange" and it still bears that name in America , and even in India .

    , To return , however , to the history of its progress in this quarter of the globe , it was asserted by Valmont de Bomare , a Portuguese , that

    the first sweet orange brought to Europe was one till lately still preserved , and in the possession of the Count St . Laurent at Lisbon ;

    and some other writers not only accepted this as a fact , but even particularized that it was brought by Jean de Castrowho voyaged

    in 1520 ; and it was further said to have been the , only survivor

    of a number sent as a present from Asia to Conde Mellor , prime

    412 Fruits In Their Season.

    412 FRUITS IN THEIR SEASON .

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1861, page 412, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021861/page/52/