Note 151
From The Invasion of Africa, part of Chapter 51 of the Decline & Fall

The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed at Rome among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the women. A round board or table, four or five feet in diameter, sold for the price of an estate (latifundii taxatione), eight, ten or twelve thousand pounds sterling (Plin. Hist Natur. xiii. 29). I conceive that I must not confound the tree citrus with that of the fruit citrum. But I am not botanist enough to define the former (it is like the wild cypress) by the vulgar or Linnaean name; nor will I decide whether the citrum be the orange or the lemon. Salmasius appears to exhaust the subject, but he too often involves himself in the web of his disorderly erudition (Plinian. Exercitat. tom. ii. p. 666, etc.).

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