(or of those which have been submitted to the action of the écuelle
à piquer) on a coarse grater of tinned iron, and distilling the grated
peel. The oil so obtained is colourless, and of inferior fragrance,
and is sold at a lower price, while that obtained by the cold processes
has a yellow colour and powerful odour.
Essence of lemon is chiefly brought from Messina and Palermo packed in copper bottles holding 25 to 50 kilogrammes or more, and sometimes in tinned bottles of smaller size. It is said to be rarely found in a state of purity in commerce, almost all that comes into the market being diluted with the cheaper distilled oil. This fact may be considered as proved by the price at which the essence of lemon is sold in England, this being less than it costs the manufacturer to make it. When long kept the essence deposits a white greasy stearoptene, apparently identical with the bergaptene obtained from the essential oil of the Bergamot orange. The chief constituent of oil of lemon is the terpene, C10H16, boiling at 348°.8 Fahr., which, like oil of turpentine, readily yields crystals of terpin, C10H163OH2, but differs in yielding the crystalline compound, C10H16+2Cl, oil of turpentine forming one having the formula C10H16+HCl. Oil of lemons also contains, according to Tilden, another hydrocarbon, C10H16, boiling at 3.20° Fahr., a small amount of cymene, and a compound acetic ether, C2H3O⋅C10H17O. The natural essence of lemon not being wholly soluble in rectified spirit of wine, an essence for culinary purposes is sometimes prepared by digesting 6 oz. of lemon peel in one pint of pure alcohol of 95%, and, when the rind has become brittle, which takes place in about two and a half hours, powdering it and percolating the alcohol through it. This article is known as “lemon flavour.”
The name lemon is also applied to some other fruits. The Java lemon is the fruit of Citrus javanica, the pear lemon of a variety of C. Limetta, and the pearl lemon of C. margarita. The fruit of a passion-flower, Passiflora laurifolia, is sometimes known as the water-lemon, and that of a Berberidaceous plant, Podophyllum peltatum, as the wild lemon. In France and Germany the lemon is known as the citron, and hence much confusion arises concerning the fruits referred to in different works. The essential oil known as oil of cedrat is usually a factitious article instead of being prepared, as its name implies, from the citron (Fr. cédratier). An essential oil is also prepared from C. Lumia, at Squillace in Calabria, and has an odour like that of Bergamot but less powerful.
| |
| Fig. 2.—Lime—Citrus medica, var. acida. | |
1, Flowering shoot. |
5, Seed cut lengthwise. |
The sour lime is Citrus acida, generally regarded as a var. (acida) of C. medica. It is a native of India, ascending to about 4000 ft. in the mountains, and occurring as a small, much-branched thorny bush. The small flowers are white or tinged with pink on the outside; the fruit is small and generally round, with a thin, light green or lemon-yellow bitter rind, and a very sour, somewhat bitter juicy pulp. It is extensively cultivated throughout the West Indies, especially in Dominica, Montserrat and Jamaica, the approximate annual value of the exports from these islands being respectively £45,000, £6000 and £6000. The plants are grown from seed in nurseries and planted out about 200 to the acre. They begin to bear from about the third year, but full crops are not produced until the trees are six or seven years old. The ripe yellow fruit is gathered as it falls. The fruit is bruised by hand in a funnel-shaped vessel known as an écuelle, with a hollow stem; by rolling the fruit on a number of points on the side of the funnel the oil cells in the rind are broken and the oil collects in the hollow stem—this is the essential oil or essence of limes. The fruits are then taken to the mill, sorted, washed and passed through rollers and exposed to two squeezings. Two-thirds of the juice is expressed by the first squeezing, is strained at once, done up in puncheons and exported as raw juice. The product of the second squeezing, together with the juice extracted by a subsequent squeezing in a press, is strained and evaporated down to make concentrated juice; ten gallons of the raw juice yield one gallon of the concentrated juice. The raw juice is used for preparations of lime juice cordial, the concentrated for manufactures of citric acid.
On some estates citrate of lime is now manufactured in place of concentrated acid. Distilled oil of limes is prepared by distilling the juice, but its value is low in comparison with the expressed oil obtained by hand as described above. Green limes and pickled limes preserved in brine are largely exported to the United States, and more recently green limes have been exported to the United Kingdom. Limalade or preserved limes is an excellent substitute for marmalade. A spineless form of the lime appeared as a sport in Dominica in 1892, and is now grown there and elsewhere on a commercial scale. A form with seedless fruits has also recently been obtained in Dominica and Trinidad independently. The young leaves of the lime are used for perfuming the water in finger-glasses, a few being placed in the water and bruised before use.
LEMONNIER, ANTOINE LOUIS CAMILLE (1844– ), Belgian poet, was born at Ixelles, Brussels, on the 24th of March 1844. He studied law, and then took a clerkship in a government office, which he resigned after three years. Lemonnier inherited Flemish blood from both parents, and with it the animal force and pictorial energy of the Flemish temperament. He published a Salon de Bruxelles in 1863, and again in 1866. His early friendships were chiefly with artists; and he wrote art criticisms with recognized discernment. Taking a house in the hills near Namur, he devoted himself to sport, and developed the intimate sympathy with nature which informs his best work. Nos Flamands (1869) and Croquis d’automne (1870) date from this time. Paris-Berlin (1870), a pamphlet pleading the cause of France, and full of the author’s horror of war, had a great success. His capacity as a novelist, in the fresh, humorous description of peasant life, was revealed in Un Coin de village (1879). In Un Mâle (1881) he achieved a different kind of success. It deals with the amours of a poacher and a farmer’s daughter, with the forest as a background. Cachaprès, the poacher, seems the very embodiment of the wild life around him. The rejection of Un Mâle by the judges for the quinquennial prize of literature in 1883 made Lemonnier the centre of a school, inaugurated at a banquet given in his honour on the 27th of May 1883. Le Mort (1882), which describes the remorse of two peasants for a murder they have committed, is a masterpiece in its vivid representation of terror. It was remodelled as a tragedy in five acts (Paris, 1899) by its author. Ceux de la glèbe (1889), dedicated to the “children of the soil,” was written in 1885. He turned aside from local subjects for some time to produce a series of psychological novels, books of art criticism, &c., of considerable value, but assimilating more closely to French contemporary literature. The most striking of his later novels are: L’Hystérique (1885); Happe-chair (1886), often compared with Zola’s Germinal; Le Possédé (1890); La Fin des bourgeois (1892); L’Arche, journal d’une maman (1894), a quiet book, quite different from his usual work; La Faute de Mme Charvet (1895); L’Homme en amour (1897); and, with a return to Flemish subjects, Le Vent dans les moulins (1901); Petit Homme de Dieu (1902), and Comme va le ruisseau (1903). In 1888 Lemonnier was prosecuted in Paris for offending against public morals by a story in Gil Blas, and was condemned to a fine. In a later prosecution at Brussels he was defended by Edmond Picard, and acquitted; and he was arraigned for a third time, at Bruges, for his Homme en amour, but again
