Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/457

 L E M L E M 437 landing soon after found only women in the island, ruled over by Hypsipyle, daughter of the old king Thoas. From the Argonauts and the Lemnian women were descended the race called Minyre, whose king Euneus, son of Jason and Hypsipyle, sent wine and provisions to the Greeks at Troy. The Minyse were expelled by a Pelasgian tribe who came from Attica. The historical element underlying these traditions is probably that the original Thracian people were gradually brought into communication with the Greeks as navigation began to unite the scattered islands of the JKgean (see JASOX) ; the Thracian inhabitants were barbarians in com parison with the Greek mariners. The worship of Cybele was char acteristic of Thrace, whither it spread from Asia Minor at a very early period, and it deserves notice that Hypsipyle and Myrina (the name of one of the chief towns) are Amazon names, which are always connected with Asiatic Cybele-worship. Coming down to a bette r authenticated period, we mid that Lemnos was conquered by Otaues, one of the generals of Darius Hystaspes ; but was soon reconquered by Miltiades, the tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. Miltiades afterwards returned to&quot; Athens, and Lemnos continued an Athenian possession till the Macedonian empire absorbed it. On the vicissitudes of its history in the 3d century B.C. see Kohler in MMhcil. Inst. Athen., i. p. 261. The Romans declared it free in 197 B.C., but gave it over in 166 B.C. to Athens, which retained nominal possession of it till the whole of Greece was made a Roman province. A colony of Attic Kr)povxi- was established by Pericles, and many inscriptions on the island relate to Athenians. After the division of the empire, Lemnos of course passed under the Byzantine emperors ; it shared in the vicissitudes of the eastern provinces, being alternately in the power of Greeks, Italians, and Turks, till finally the Turkish sultans became supreme in the ^Egean. In 1476 the Venetians successfully defended Kokkinos or Ivotchinos against a Turkish siege ; but in 1657 Kastro was captured by the Turks from the Venetians after a siege of sixty- three days. Kastro was again besieged by the Russians in 1770. Homer speaks as if there were one town in the island called Lemnos, but in historical times there was uo such place. There were two towns, Myrina, now Kastro, and Hephaestia. The latter was the chief town ; its coins are found in considerable number, the types being sometimes the Athenian goddess and her owl, some times native religious symbols, the caps of the Dioscuri, Apollo, &c. Few coins of Myrina are known. They belong to the period of Attic occupation, and bear Athenian types. A few coins are also known which bear the name, not of either city, but of the whole island. Conze was the first to discover the site of Hephsestia, at a deserted place named Palneokastro on the east coast. It had once a splendid harbour, which is now filled up. Its situation on the east explains why Miltiades attacked it first when he came from the Chersonese. It surrendered at once, whereas Myrina, with its very strong citadel built on a perpendicular rock, sustained a siege. It is said that the shadow of Mount Athos fell at sunset on a bronze cow in the agora of Myrina. Pliny says that Athos was 87 miles to the north-west ; but the real distance is about 40 English miles. One legend localized in Lemnos still requires notice. Philoctetes was left there by the Greeks on their way to Troy ; and there he suffered ten years agony from his wounded foot, until Ulysses and Neoptolemus induced him to accompany them to Troy. He is said by Sophocles to have lived beside Mount Hermsus, which ^Eschylus (Agam., 262) makes one of the beacon points to flash the news of Troy s downfall home to Argos. See Rhode, Res Lemnicse ; Conze, Reise auf den Aeg. Inseln (where the latest account by a skilled eye-witness is to be found ; the above-mentioned facts about the present state of the island are taken from him) ; also Hunt in &quot;Walpole s Travels ; Belon du Mans, Observations dc plusieurs singularitez, &c. ; Finlay, Greece under the Romans ; Von Hammer, Gesch. des Osman. Rcichts ; Oott. Gel. Anz., 1837. The chief references in ancient writers are Iliad, i. 593 ; v. 138 ; xiv. 229, &c. ; Herod., iv. 145 ; Str., pp. 124, 330 ; Plin., iv. 23; xxxvi. 13. LEMON&quot;, the fruit of Citrus Limonum, Risso, which is regarded by some botanists as a variety of Citrus niedica, L. The wild stock of the lemon tree is a native of the valleys of Kumaon and Sikkim in the North-West Provinces of India, ascending the mountains to a height of 4000 feet, and occurring under several forms. The lemon seems to have been unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and to have been introduced by the Arabs into Spain between the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1494 the fruit was cultivated in the Azores, and largely shipped to England, but since 1838 the exportation has ceased. As a cultivated plant the lemon is now met with throughout the Mediterranean region, in Spain and Portu gal, in California and Florida, and in almost all tropical and subtropical countries. Like the apple and pear, it varies exceedingly under cultivation. Risso and Poiteau enumerate forty -seven varieties of this fruit, although they maintain as distinct the sweet lime, Citrus Limetta, Risso, with eight varieties, and the sweet lemon, C itnis Lumia, Risso, which differ only in the fruit possessing an insipid instead of an acid juice, with twelve varieties. The lemon is more delicate than the orange, although, according to Humboldt, both require an annual mean temperature of 62Fahr. Unlike the orange, which presents a fine close head of deep green foliage, it forms a straggling bush, or small tree, 10 to 12 feet high, with paler, more scattered leaves, and short angular branches with sharp spines in the axils. The flowers, which possess a sweet odour quite distinct from that of the orange, are in part hermaphrodite and in part unisexual, the outside of the corolla having a purplish hue. The fruit, which is usually crowned with a nipple, consists of an outer rind or peel, the surface of which is more or less rough from the convex oil receptacles imbedded in it, and of a white inner rind, which is spongy and nearly tasteless, the whole of the inte rior of the fruit being filled with soft parenchymatous tissue, divided into about ten to twelve compartments, each gene rally containing two or three seeds. The white inner rind varies much in thickness in different kinds, but is never so thick as in the citron. As lemons are much more profitable to grow than oranges, on account of their keeping properties, and from their being less liable to injury during voyages, the cultivation of the lemon is preferred in Italy wherever it will succeed. In damp valleys it is liable to be attacked by a fungus called &quot; charbon &quot; (Dematium monophyllum), the stem, leaves, and fruit becoming covered with a blackish dust. This is said to be coincident with or subsequent to the attacks of a small oval brown insect, Chermes hesperidum, L. Trees grown in the shade, and not properly exposed to sunlight and air, suffer most severely from these pests. Syringing with milk of lime when the young insects are hatched, and before they have fixed themselves to the plant, seems to be the most effectual remedy known. Since the year 1875 this fungoid disease has made great ravages in Sicily among the lemon and citron trees, especially around Catania and Messina. M. Heritte attributes the prevalence of the disease to the fact that the growers have induced an unnatural degree of fertility in the trees, permitting them to bear enormous crops year after year. This loss of vitality is in some measure met by grafting healthy scions of the lemon on the bitter orange, but trees so grafted do not bear fruit until they are eight or ten years old. The lemon tree is said to be exceedingly fruitful, a large one in Spain or Sicily ripening as many as three thousand fruits in favourable seasons. In the south of Europe lemons are collected more or less during every month of the year, but in Sicily the chief harvest takes place from the end of October to the end of December, those gathered during the last two months of the year being considered the best for keeping purposes. The fruit is gathered while still green. After collection the finest specimens are picked out and packed in cases, each containing about four hundred and twenty fruits, and also in boxes, three of which are equal to two cases, each lemon being separately packed in paper. The remainder, consisting of ill-shaped or unsound fruits, are reserved for the manufacture of the essential oil and juice. The whole of the sound lemons collected are usually packed in boxes, but those which are not exported immediately are carefully picked over and the unsound ones removed before shipment. Tbe exporta tion is continued as required until April and May. The large lemons with a rougher rind, which appear in the London market in July and August, are grown at Sorrento