MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. ' 701 



Baghdadi without one or more enormous scars on his face, probably dating 

 from his infancy. European adults are often fortunate enough to have the 

 boils on their arms or other comparatively inconspicuous place. These pests 

 may appear in any number, from a single one to several dozen, and an 

 English lady is said to have had no less than 67. Medical skill as to their 

 treatment is strictly negative, and it seems to be established that any sort of 

 remedy only aggravates the disease, which must run its course like measles or 

 small-pox. With the exception of one class of men, almost everybody falls a 

 victim sooner on later, and the two or three in every hundred who are lucky 

 enough to escape are as much puffed up as the people who are proof against 

 sea-sickness ; they are apt to talk of the necessity for frequent ablutions and to 

 plume themselves on their superior cleanliness ? That there is some connection 

 between the absence of Baghdad boils and water seems clear from the exception 

 above referred to, namely, the men employed in the river steamers, who spend a 

 large proportion of their lives in going up and down the Tigris, though while 

 the ship is in port they are as much on shore as anybody else. 



To turn to the pleasanter subject of date palms. These play as important a 

 part in Mesopotamia as the banana in Central Africa, and the cocoanut palm in 

 some parts of India. The Mahomedans are very proud of the date palm tree, 

 and say that it refuses to grow well in any country which is not consecrated to 

 Islam. There are many varieties, all exactly alike in appeaiance, but differing 

 in the fruit. In Baghdad there are 40 or 50 well-known kinds of dates, some 

 of them bearing romantic names, such as " lady's fingers," and " pretty 

 maiden's eyes." In the Basra district there are even more varieties, as well as 

 a vastly greater number of trees. The palms between Fao at the mouth of the 

 river and Gurna and at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates are numbered 

 in millions, and each brings in an average income of three or four rupees a 

 year. 



The Arabs say there is a separate use of some product of the date tree for 

 every day of the year. I do not propose to enumerate so many, but some of the 

 chief uses are as follows. Dates form a staple part of the food of the poor at 

 all seasons, and the choicer kinds are much appreciated by the rich as dessert. 

 The alcohol drink made from dates and called arrack is, of course, well known. 

 The refuse and damaged dates make a particularly good food for animals, and 

 the stones are ground into meal and given to cattle. The leaves are used in 

 many different ways, and make brushes, fans, matting, huts, etc. ; the hollow 

 trunks are used as water channels and palisades, and also for building, 

 though any other wood would be better for this purpose ; the fibre is made 

 into rope. 



The appearance of a country covered with date palms is painfully monoto- 

 nous, although at first the observer is struck with the gracefulness of their forms. 

 The colour of the foliage is ugly, a dull greyish green, which even in the spring 

 does not take on a brighter tinge ; as the season advances, dead and dying 

 leaves hang down against the trunks, giving the trees a quite disorderly 

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