See Rhode, Res Lemnicae; Conze, Reise auf den Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres (from which the above-mentioned facts about the present state of the island are taken); also Hunt in Walpole’s Travels; Belon du Mans, Observations de plusieurs singularitez, &c.; Finlay, Greece under the Romans; von Hammer, Gesch. des Osman. Reiches; Gött. Gel. Anz. (1837). The chief references in ancicnt writers are Iliad i. 593, v. 138, xiv. 229, &c.; Herod. iv. 145; Str. pp. 124, 330; Plin. iv. 23, xxxvi. 13.
LEMOINNE, JOHN ÉMILE (1815-1892), French journalist, was born of French parents, in London, on the 17th of October 1815. He was educated first at an English school and then in France. In 1840 he began writing for the Journal des débats, on English and other foreign questions, and under the empire he held up to admiration the free institutions of England by contrast with imperial methods. After 1871 he supported Thiers, but his sympathies rather tended towards a liberalized monarchy, until the comte de Chambord’s policy made such a development an impossibility, and he then ranged himself with the moderate Republicans. In 1875 Lemoinne was elected to the French Academy, and in 1880 he was nominated a life senator. Distinguished though he was for a real knowledge of England among the French journalists who wrote on foreign affairs, his tone towards English policy greatly changed in later days, and though he never shared the extreme French bitterness against England as regards Egypt, he maintained a critical attitude which served to stimulate French Anglophobia. He was a frequent contributor to the Revue des deux mondes, and published several books, the best known of which is his Études critiques et biographiques (1862). He died in Paris on the 14th of December 1892.
LEMON, MARK (1809-1870), editor of Punch, was born in London on the 30th of November 1809. He had a natural talent for journalism and the stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less congenial business to devote himself to the writing of plays. More than sixty of his melodramas, operettas and comedies were produced in London. At the same time he contributed to a variety of magazines and newspapers, and founded and edited the Field. In 1841 Lemon and Henry Mayhew conceived the idea of a humorous weekly paper to be called Punch, and when the first number was issued, in July 1841, were joint-editors and, with the printer and engraver, equal owners. The paper was for some time unsuccessful, Lemon keeping it alive out of the profits of his plays. On the sale of Punch Lemon became sole editor for the new proprietors, and it remained under his control until his death, achieving remarkable popularity and influence. Lemon was an actor of ability, a pleasing lecturer and a successful impersonator of Shakespearian characters. He also wrote a host of novelettes and lyrics, over a hundred songs, a few three-volume novels, several Christmas fairy tales and a volume of jests. He died at Crawley, Sussex, on the 23rd of May 1870.
LEMON, the fruit of Citrus Limonum, which is regarded by some botanists as a variety of Citrus medica. The wild stock of the lemon tree is said to be a native of the valleys of Kumaon and Sikkim in the North-West provinces of India, ascending to a height of 4000 ft., and occurring under several forms. Sir George Watt (Dictionary of Economic Products of India, ii. 352) regards the wild plants as wild forms of the lime or citron and considers it highly probable that the wild form of the lemon has not yet been discovered.
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| Fig. 1.—Lemon—Citrus Limonum. | |
1, Flowering shoot. 2, Flower with two petals and two bundles of stamens removed; slightly enlarged. | 3, Fruit. 4, Same cut across. 5, Seed. 6, Same cut lengthwise. |
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 Portugal, 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, C. Limetta, with eight varieties, and the sweet lemon, C. Lumia, with twelve varieties, which differ only in the fruit possessing an insipid instead of an acid juice.
The lemon is more delicate than the orange, although, according to Humboldt, both require an annual mean temperature of 62° Fahr. Unlike the orange, which presents a fine close head of deep green foliage, it forms a straggling bush, or small tree, 10 to 12 ft. 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 interior of the fruit being filled with soft parenchymatous tissue, divided into about ten to twelve compartments, each generally 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 like the orange (q.v.) to be attacked by a fungus sooty mould, the stem, leaves, and fruit becoming covered with a blackish dust. This is coincident with or subsequent to the attacks of a small oval brown insect, Chermes hesperidum. Trees not properly exposed to sunlight and air suffer most severely from these pests. Syringing with resin-wash or milk of lime when the young insects are hatched, and before they have fixed themselves to the plant, is a preventive. Since 1875 this fungoid disease has made great ravages in Sicily among the lemon and citron trees, especially around Catania and Messina. 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.