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species, without, however, manifesting exactly their peculiar features. Such are most of the races of Amboine, of which Rumphius has given us the description; such are some races of the Cochin China and China fruit, described by Louveiro; and such, finally, are some races from Japan, reported by Kæmpfer and Thumberg.

therefore, subdivided these two species into as many sub-species, which have also received their character from the hand of Nature, and are, consequently, equally invariable.

The citron has been divided into the cedrat and the lemon. The orange has been divided into the orange and bigarade.

The most of these races not only cannot be regarded as varieties of our Citrus family in Europe, but they cannot even be considered as species belonging to our genus Citrus. They differ sensibly from them, considered either with reference to the conventional features established by artifi-matic peel. cial systems, or the natural features presented by the structure of their trunk, the form of their leaves, the character of their flowers, the properties and modifications of their fruits. Their physiognomy, as a whole, announces that they belong to the same natural family as the Citrus, but that they form another branch or genus of it which has its own species, varieties, and mon-able and piquant (sharp) juice.

The cedrat tree has been distinguished by short and stiff branches, green and oblong leaves, whose petiole is smooth and continuous with the central vein which divides them, and by its oblong fruit, formed of a thick, tender, and aro

sters.

Perhaps among those which have more relation to the Citrus, there may be some which unite these two analogous genera and form a transition by which nature passes from one genus to the other; perhaps also this transition is apparent in some other species deviating more from them, and approaching more to the crateva marmelos, the murraya exotica, and the limonia.

We will leave to botanists the examination of this conjecture, which demands profound scientific knowledge, experimental observation of those plants which we at present are acquainted with only from descriptions, and which no one probably has as yet studied in all the details of their vegetable life. We shall confine ourselves to a general view of the species arranged by botanists under the genus Citrus, and the varieties which belong to them.

The lemon tree, on the contrary, bears long, pliant, and flexible branches, with large and yellowish leaves, whose petiole is raised on the sides by a kind of jutting out, and articulated at the point of its union with the disk.of the leaf; it bears fruit with a smooth, thin, and bitter peel, and an abundant pulp, full of an acid but agree

The sweet orange differs from the bigarade by its appearance or bearing, which is more vigorous, by its flower, which has less aroma, and by its fruit, whose peel, which is thin, contains a more feeble essential oil, and whose pulp is full of a sweet and agreeable juice. A less majestic bearing, an infinitely more odoriferous flower, and a fruit whose peel possesses a bitter and piquant aroma, mingled also with the acidity of the pulp, are the distinctive characteristics of the bigarade tree.

These four species have been the elements for forming all the races we now possess. They have been subdivided into various generations, which have been modified by fecundation without altering the characteristics of the species, and have given rise to varieties. They have been subsequently crossed among themselves in a great number of different proportions, and have given birth to hybrids which are as numerous as the gradations or variations of which these comdifferent races always, by their peculiarities, announce either one or several of these types, and we find everywhere either their isolated mark or the mark of the reunion of several of them. We will commence by giving a representation of the species.

ART. II.-Order of divisions followed by Nature-binations are susceptible. Nevertheless, all these First division-Second division-Characteristic features which determine them.

These principles fixed, it is easy to classify in a natural order the Citrus family of Europe. Nature, which never proceeds by leaps, but always gradually and insensibly in her operations, has commenced by dividing this genus into two sections, of which one is formed by the citron and the other by the orange. She has marked these two species by several pronounced and constant characteristics, which form their physiognomy. The citron tree has always a leaf with a linear petiole, a scion or young shoot of a violet red, flowers partly hermaphrodite and partly dice cious, the corolla white within and shaded with violet red without, stamens to the number of thirty or forty, the fruit oblong, yellowish, with a tender peel, adhering to the pulp.

The orange tree, on the contrary, has constantly a leaf with a winged petiole, the scion of a whitish green, the flower hermaphrodite, with an entirely white corolla, and stamens to the num ber of twenty, the fruit round, golden, and having a peel interiorly cottony or downy, and not at all adherent to the pulp.

But this first division was not sufficiently adapted to the infinite combinations with which Nature wished to enrich this beautiful genus. She has,

THE CITRON TREE.

The citron tree is an arborescent plant. It does not bend like the lemon tree. It does not grow high like the orange tree. Its branches are short and stiff. Its leaves are violet at first, but afterwards green, alternate, simple, oblong, dentate, and sprinkled with an infinite number of little points, which are so many vesicles containing the aroma. The petioles are nude, and only a continuation of the central vein of the leaf. The bud is large, conical, and guarded by a solitary spine. It puts forth, during almost the whole year, flowers in bouquets or clusters, each borne on a pedicel resting on a peduncle, sometimes axillary, but regularly terminal and multiflorous. The flowers, in part hermaphrodite and partly dioecious, are formed of a monocephalous five-pointed calyx, which contains a corolla whose petals, five in number, are enlarged at the base, inserted around a hypogynous disk, white within, and shaded without with a violet red; the stamens, thirty or

forty in number, have the same insertion as the corolla; the filaments are brought together in cylindrical form, crowded at the base and polyadelphous; the anther is yellow, linear, and divided in the middle by a hollow; the pistil is composed of a simple ovary, ovoid, surmounted by a single, fleshy style, and a simple globular stigma, the pistil covered with a viscous substance like honey. The fruit is capsular and multilocular. It is formed of two skins, of which the outside one is rough, yellowish, thin, sown with an infinite number of globular vesicles appearing like little points, and full of a very aromatic oil; the interior skin is thick, white, tender, fleshy, and forms the most considerable part of the fruit. Under this interior skin is a membrane which envelops the pulpy part, and which, penetrating the interior, forms double partitions converging to an axis, where they divide the fruit into nine or ten sections. These sections are polyspermous. They are filled with a pulpy flesh formed from a quantity of oblong vesicles full of an acid juice, and containing cartilaginous seeds in indeterminate number.

THE LEMON TREE.

The lemon is a tree, but its pliant branches show a preference for an espalier.

Its leaves are ovoid, large, dentate, of a clear green, tending to yellow. They are borne on a petiole, articulated at the point of its union with the disc of the leaf, and guarded by two projections on the sides. Its shoots while tender are of a purplish tint. Its flowers are larger than those of the orange, and a little smaller than those of the citron tree, and partly hermaphrodite and partly diœcious. The corolla has five petals, colored red without and white within, set upon a green five-cleft calyx, in the midst of which in the hermaphrodite flowers rises a pistil smaller than in the citron, surmounted by a stigma covered also with a viscous humor and surrounded by from thirty to forty stamens united into several bodies and bearing a yellow anther. The fruit, almost ovoid, is nippled, or pointed, at the summit. The exterior skin is thin and of a very pale, clear yellow tint. The interior skin is thin also, white and tough. The first is formed of a quantity of little vesicles containing a very penetrating aroma, which vanishes in a great degree when the fruit reaches excessive maturity. The pulp is enclosed in nine or eleven sections, which form the most considerable part of the fruit, and are composed of an infinite number of oblong vesicles of a light yellow, containing a sharply acid juice, abundant and very agreeable. The parenchyma or pellicle which covers these sections is so adherent to the skin or peel that it can not be separated without being torn. It is thin, transparent, and without bitterness.

THE ORANGE TREE.

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ful odor emanating from it. The stamens, twenty in number, are divided into several bodies, and bear an oblong anther, whose pollen is of a deep yellow.

The fruit of the orange tree is spherical, and sometimes flattened. Its peel is more or less thin, according to the kinds; its interior part is light, stringy, and tasteless; its exterior is thin, colored a golden yellow, which distinguishes the orange from the lemon and citron, and is composed of a quantity of vesicles containing an agreeable essential oil.

The sections, nine in number, which form the larger part of the fruit, are enveloped in a transparent membrane, which is with much facility detached from the peel, to which it clings only by the white, cottony substance forming the interior skin. The pulp contained by these sections is formed of a quantity of oblong vesicles of deep yellow color, full of a sweet and refreshing juice, and contains oblong, cartilaginous, and yellowish seeds.

THE BIGARADE TREE.

The orange tree having sour fruit, or the bigarade, does not grow so high as the sweet orange; its leaf has the heart of the petiole more pronounced; its flower has vastly more aroma, and is preferred for perfuming waters and essences; its fruit is somewhat rough and of a deeper reddish tint, and the vesicles contained in the exterior skin have a stronger aroma, indicating also the bitterness of the interior peel and the parenchyma which covers the sections of the fruit. Its juice is sharp, and also slightly bitter from the membrane forming the vesicles in which the juice is contained.

THE CITRON FRUIT.

The citron is eaten only as a comfit. The quantity of juice in its pulp is so small that little account is made of it; it has the properties of lemon juice, but is less acid and has less perfume. The peel of the citron is the part most used; the essential oil which it contains in the exterior part is in a liquid state in the prominent vesicles, which give to it the tuberosities which characterize it. This oil is often pressed out, and, mixed with sugar, is soluble in water, and used for giving an aromatic flavor to liquors. The interior part of the peel, or the white, is agreeable to the taste when its aroma is corrected by sugar; it is especially delicious when preserved, and in this form it is generally found in commerce.

THE LEMON.

The lemon peel contains also an essential oil full of aroma; but this fruit is used only for its acid and agreeable juice, which is very abundant, and serves for seasoning animal and vegetable substances. From it is also made, with sugar and water, a drink beneficial to persons suffering from inflammatory and putrid fevers. It is the principal specific in scurvy, and the best antidote against vegetable poisons.

The orange is more vigorous than the citron and lemon trees. It forms a full and majestic The lemon contains citric acid in a perfect tree. Its leaves are oblong, pointed, slightly den-state, only mixed with water, from which it can tate, and winged in the petiole, and of a very deep green, which distinguishes them at once even to the sight from those of the lemon and citron trees.

The constantly hermaphrodite flower has five petals, and is distinguished from those of the citron and lemon by its whiteness and the grate

be easily separated. It furnishes to the art of dyeing a means of enlivening red colors taken from the vegetable kingdom, and especially the color of the carthamus or safflower, which by this means becomes so brilliant in silks. It has a similar use in China and India, where the juice is also used in order to prepare metals for gild

ing, in the same manner as Europeans employ | and are confounded with his lumies, such as the aqua fortis.

THE ORANGE.

The sweet orange is one of the most delicious and refreshing of fruits. It is antiscorbutic and very useful in bilious maladies. Its peel has an essential oil full of aroma, which at maturity loses its biting and bitter quality; the peel may then be eaten. In the finest varieties the peel is very thin. It is thicker in others, but the white part, instead of being fleshy as in the citron, is always cottony, light, and tasteless. Orange juice is extremely sweet and agreeable. The sweet orange is eaten in its natural state, and this is almost its only use.

THE BIGARADE.

The bitter orange is not eaten. Preserves are made from them, which are very agreeable. The peel is more aromatic than that of other species, and the essential oil it contains has always a bit terness and caustic taste which distinguishes it from the sweet orange. The juice of the bigarade is sharp and bitter. It is used in the same manner as that of the lemon, as an agreeable seasoning for animal and vegetable substances, and especially for fish, whose tendency to putrefaction is thus greatly diminished. But the principal of the bigarade tree is that of its flower. This is exceedingly sweet-scented, and from it are made perfumed waters and essences, which surpass in gratefulness those of the lemon, sweet orange, or citron.

This finishes the description of the four primitive species into which the numerous family of the Citrus is divided.

Before undertaking the description and identification of their derivatives, it is necessary to establish the acceptation of several terms which have been adopted by botanists, agriculturists, and gardeners to designate some different races whose characteristics have not been well determined. We will examine the meaning of the words lime, lumie, and poncire.

It is difficult to determine with exactness the idea attached to each of these terms, and still more difficult to follow out all their application to various races by different writers; but we shall not have much trouble in recognizing that all these names have only been invented in order to designate the hybrids which we meet with every day in our gardens, and which could not be called by the names already in use, because these names belonged to the species and their varieties. As, however, the origin and nature of these fruits was little known, they were unable to employ systematically the names which they have assigned indefinitely to individuals of very different nature.

Ferraris seems to designate, under the name of lime, nippled fruits derived from the orange and the lemon, and under the name of lumie, hybrids of large, round fruit with a yellow, thick skin, and a very sour thin pulp. But in practice he does not always make this distinction, and, for example, places among limes the lemons called sweet as well as those of an orange pulp; and after having classed among the lumies the Adam's apple, under the name of lumia valentina, and other hybrids of several forms, and having a citron peel, he describes, under the name of limes, orange-lemons, of which several resemble

lima dulcis, which he puts in the same class as the Citrus aurantiatum, or cedrat of China, which he calls lima citrata scabiosa et monstruosa.

He subsequently confounds these same races of fruits with lemon-cedrats and poncires, which he regards as different species, although these terms are also considered as only synonyms representing equally the same hybrid.

In the midst of this confusion, however, we find that all writers have recognized under these same names of lime, lumie and poncire, the bybrids of the Citrus family, although each one has had a separate definition for them. These are the terms applied to hybrids in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal.

We shall, therefore, follow this nomenclature, and in order to give to it more precision, we will designate the poncire as the hybrid of the lemon and the citron or cedrat; the lime as the hybrid of the orange and the lemon; and the lumie as the hybrid of the citron and the orange.

We shall subdivide these three races of bybrids into two classes.

The first comprises hybrids which have preserved all the physiognomy of the principal species, from which they are distinguished only by very slight modifications hardly affecting any part of the plant.

The second class comprises those hybrids in which the mixture is so pronounced that they cannot be confounded with any of the varieties of the primitive species.

We shall retain for the first class the name of the species to which they belong, accompanied by an epithet indicating the modification which distinguishes them; such are the Chinese citron, which we will call the monstrous citron, and the cedrat of Florence, which we shall still call the citron of Florence.

The second class will preserve the names of lime, lumie, and poncire. We shall, however, be careful to arrange the different varieties under the species which predominate in the mixture, and to which they seem most to belong. This is the method I shall follow in the following detailed descriptions of species, varieties, and hybrids.

CHAPTER III.

IDENTIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION.

ART. I.-The Citron Tree.

The citron tree was for several centuries a constant species, preserved in Europe without bybrids or varieties. Thus Theophrastus, Virgil, Pliny, Palladius, Crescentius, &c., represent it. As soon, however, as its cultivation was extended and it was multiplied by seed, it gave varieties; and it produced hybrids also so soon as it was placed in the same soil with lemon and orange trees.

Hence the three varieties of Mathiole and Gallo, and the more numerous ones of the Arabic agriculturists; hence also the infinite races of later writers, who have classed among the species of the citron tree the multitude of monsters which reappear every day without ever resembling each other, and which are hardly ever perpetuated.

Ferraris reports eight species of this tree, and

gives plates of five, of which three are monsters. Commelyn gives four species of it, of which two are only monsters.

Volcamerius gives ten species, of which several are only monsters, and others are sub-varieties or varieties represented twice.

The plan we shall follow simplifies this nomenclature, and causes the most of these above-mentioned races to disappear.

There is only one type; but hybrids are numberless, which it is impossible and useless to follow, and which must be reduced to those whose peculiarities are most remarkable.

The citron of Media, known in Liguria as the citron of the Hebrews, or the Hebrew citron, is certainly the type.

There are only three varieties deserving mention: the citron of Genoa, which surpasses the type in size, but is inferior to it in taste and delicacy; the citron of Salo, which surpasses the type in delicacy and aroma, but is inferior to it in volume; and the double-flowered citron, remarkable for its double or semi-double flower, and so prone to irregular fecundation as often to produce monsters.

The hybrids seem innumerable, because they present a gradation of shades of difference in their physiognomy, which is as varied as the combinations from which they result; but when accustomed to seeing them, one easily perceives that there is a determinate number of mixtures. to which all may be referred.

I will begin by dividing them into two classeshybrids and semi-hybrids. I understand by hybrids those in which the mixture has sensibly altered the natural physiognomy of the species, and by semi-hybrids those in which this mixture is so slight as to be determined only with great care. I will place in this article only the last class, and discuss the first class under the articles concerning the respective species which predominate in the mixture.

among the citron trees which form monstrous varieties. The lemon and the orange present plants, of which the fruit is striped, starred, &c., but the citron produces no other than fruit which is tuberculous, a form peculiar to this species. The fruits shaped like a hand, or crumpled around the nipple; those which enclose within themselves another fruit with its rind, or only a multitude of cells crossed and confounded one with another, all appear upon ordinary trees only in the midst of other fruits; and, far from owing their form to the nature of the plant which bears them, they are the result of an extraordinary and irregular fertilization, which has acted upon the thin skin (pericarp) of the individual fruit.

Thus it becomes necessary to place in the class of monstrosities the five varieties spoken of in the Hesperides by Volcamerius, on pages 41, 45, 65, 116, 117.

These extraordinary fruits appear more frequently among certain varieties, yet but a few of these monsters are found, in the midst of a great number of fruits whose forms are unaltered.

VARIETIES-NO. I.

Citrus medica cedra fructu oblongo, crasso, eduli, odoratissimo. Citronier des Juifs. (Cedrat.)

Cedro degli Ebrei, vulgo. (Pitima.) Malum citreum maximum Salodianum: Cedro grosso bondolotto. (Volc.) Cedrato ordinario. (Ib.)

maximo, conico, verrucoso, sapore, et odore insigni. (L.
Citreum vulgare. (Tournef.) Limonia cedra fructu
B. Calvel.)

Citrus medica: cedro: cedrato. (Targ. Inst. Bot.)
Citrus medica cedra. (Desfont, Tab. de l'Ecole de Bot.)

The cedrat, properly speaking, or citron of Media, is a tree of medium height, with a root greatly branched or ramified, yellow outside, whitish within.

The general appearance of the tree is irregular and scattering. The trunk is of a greyish green, striped with white. The wood is hard, and branches tough, short, and well grown. The buds are large, prominent, and furnished with a single thorn, short and thick. The shoots, or scions, violet at their budding, change finally to green. The leaf is long, regularly pointed, and almost as large near the extremities as in the middle; it is of a beautiful green, bitter to the taste, and odorous. The flowers are in clusters

petals shaded on the outer side with purple, and thirty or forty stamens; the anther oblong, and clear yellow; the pistil, large and long, rests upon the ovary. Some of the flowers, lacking this part, fall off. The flower has a feeble odor, and yields very little essence.

The semi-hybrids of the citron tree are only three: the citron of Florence, the citron of China, or the orange-citron, and the sweet citron. All the other citrons with which the Hesperides of Commelyn are filled are only sub-varieties differing only by insensible peculiarities, which appear and re-appear successively, or else isolated-cup-shaped, large and full-having five white monsters, which are only fruits of which every tree produces some annually in the midst of ordinary fruit, but which are not perpetuated by their seed. Among the first, the sub-varieties, are the citron of Corfu, whose fruit is so small and ordinary that it is called in the country the cedro mazza-cani. The cedrat of Holland, the cedrat bergamotte, the cedrat oviform, the cedrat of Garda, the cedrat musciato and the dorato, names given by Volcamerius, are only lemon-citrons, whose family is so numerous and varied that I might easily describe twenty varieties of them now growing in my garden, produced from seed, and which I regard as unworthy to be perpetu ated by the graft, because they possess no characteristic rendering them extraordinary.

*The species with monstrous fruits completes the list of the Hesperides.

At the present time I know of but very few

*Up to this point Prof. Wilcox had translated this work

at the time of his death. The translation has been completed by Mrs. C. A. Cowgill, of Tallahassee, Fla.

The fruit is large and oblong, carrying sometimes the pistil upon its point. The rind is yellowish, thin, glossy, a little uneven, and contains delicious aroma. The inner skin is thick, tender, aromatic, rather sweet, and may be eaten with sugar, or made into conserves. This skin adheres very closely to the pulp, which is thin, composed of an infinity of whitish vesicles, containing a slightly acid, yet somewhat insípid juice, and enclosing a great number of oblong seeds covered by a reddish skin, and formed of a whitish and bitter kernel. The citron tree of Media is grown in Liguria only from slips; these root bigarade (sour orange). very easily. It is sometimes grafted upon the

It bears but little fruit, and fears extremely the

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Malum citrum Genuense vulgare.

(Volc.)

and of a deep green color; they are ovate in shape, without points, and are often quilled at their edges like the lip of a vase. The flowers are in clusters, their corollas being red on the outside.

Its fruit is of the size of the largest citron, being often seventy centimetres (nearly twenty-eight inches) in circumference. Ordinarily they are nearly round, somewhat pointed at the apex, where the rind forms itself into a fold, and penetrates to the middle of the inner skin, and even to the pulp.

The outer skin, or rind, is of a pale orange color and very uneven, being covered with large bunches.

The inner skin, which forms the body of the fruit, is white, coarse, and leathery. Its pulp is thin and acid, and never contains seed.

Citrum Genuense magni incrementi. (Fer. Hesp.) The citron of Genoa differs but little from the citron of the Jews, except in its fruit, which is extremely developed, and of which the flesh is tough and less delicate. This variety is cultivated for its beauty, rather than its use to the confec-grows very easily from layers, but is seldom cultioner, at Tazzia, St. Remo, and at Menton.

VARIETIES-NO. III.

parvo Salodiano.

Citrus medica cedra fructu
Citronier de Salo: Petit cedrat: Cedrino: Cedratello.
Citrum Salodianum parvum, bonitate primum. (Fer.
Hesp.)

Cedrato di Garda. (Volc., part 2.)

The small citron of Salo is a very fine fruit, sought after for the aroma of the outer and for the delicacy of the inner skin. It originally appeared at Salo, on the Lake of Garda, where its culture is very extensive.

It is also cultivated at Nervi, at Pegi, and at Final, where it is called cedrino.

This citron tree is multiplied by graft, and also

tivated in Liguria, except by amateurs and nurserymen. A plant may be seen in the Garden of the Museum of Natural History, Paris.

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Malum citreum dulci medulla. (Fer. Hesp.)

The sweet fruited citron is a genuine lumie, uniting many of the characteristics of the citron flower orange. to those of the orange. Its leaf is citron, its Its fruit has the form of the cit ron, and the color of the orange, having a thick yet delicate skin which may be eaten with pleas modified by the influence of the orange, has a ure like that of the citron, and a juice which,

It differs from the citron of Florence only in the leaf, which, in the latter, resembles that of the lemon, while that of Salo has an entirely citron leaf; and in the form of the fruit, which is a little more ovate. Some pretend that this is inferior in taste and perfume to the citron of Flor-sweet and very agreeable taste.

ence.

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Citrus medica cedra fructu monstruoso aurantiato, cor-
tice crasso mucronato, medulla exigua, seminibus carente.
Cedrat monstreux, on cedrat de la Chine.
Citrus medica tuberosa: Poncire. (Desfont.)
Lima citrata monstruosa sive scabiosa. (Fer.) Lima
Romana. (Miller.)

The large orange citron is a plant having short and stiff branches, flattened at the axil of the leaf.

These branches have many knots or joints closely placed, bearing large buds, which often develop into many shoots. The leaves, based upon a large and scoop-shaped petiole, are fleshy

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This plant often bears monsters, enclosing within themselves a second fruit about the size of a walnut, and covered with a golden skin like the other fruits. This phenomenon is due to ex. traordinary fertilization, and occurs more frequently among hybrids than in the ordinary va rieties; most often in varieties having semidouble flowers.

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Flor.)

Malum citreum Florentinum. (Volc.)

Citrus medica Florentina: Citronier de Florence. (Desf., Tab. de l'Ecole Bot.)

The citron of Florence has been placed by Ferraris among the lemon-cedrats, and has, in truth, characteristics proving a mixture of citron with lemon.

Its general appearance is that of the citron tree, though growing only to a shrub, and its tough branches can scarcely be made to submit to the espalier (trellis).

But the leaf is as large as the lemon, and similar to it in form and color. The leaf is remarka ble because of the yellowish spots upon the clear green, peculiar to this species.

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