O'^ NOTICES OF BOOKS AND MEMOIKS. 



guished from the latter genus by the want of the fibrous layer to 

 be found dh-ectly under the thin outer skin of the fruit. The 

 albumen of Areca Catechu, L., is, as is well known, generally 

 chewed in India with the leaves of Piper Betle, L. ; it is said to 

 preserve the teeth, though it colours them black, and the saliva 

 red. [Disks of the unripe albumen of this palm of the consistency 

 of leather are strung together and ex^Dosed for sale in the seaport- 

 towns of Arabia. They are to be found in the Berlin Agricultural 

 Museum, sent by J. M. Hildebrandt.— yl.] Unger was the first to 

 perceive the identity of Areca Passalacquce, Knth., with the fruit of 

 Hyphane Argun, Mart., a palm which inhabits several valleys of 

 the Nubian desert within the great bend of the Nile between 

 Qorosqo and Abu-Hammed, nearly under the twenty-first degree 

 of latitude. The unripe fruits of this palm, which is called Argun 

 or Dellach* by the natives, is, according to the notes of the 

 Belgian traveller, E. de Pruyssenaeref buried by the natives for a 

 time, by which the albumen acquires a pleasant taste, similar to 

 that of the cocoa-nut. The finding of this palm-fruit in old 

 Egyptian tombs has the greater interest from the fact that the 

 plant is not cultivated now in Egypt, and this was perhaps also the 

 case in times of antiquity. Its present range is touched by the 

 desert road, traversed from the earliest times, which connects Lower 

 Nubia with that tract of the Nile Valley in which the ancient 

 kingdom of Meroe flourished, the relations of which to Egyptian 

 culture are well known. 



Of the cultivation of the olive [Olea europea, L.) in ancient 

 Egypt we possess various accounts ; for instance, Strabo| tells us 

 of the extensive cultivation of the olive tree in Nomos of Arsinoe — 

 the modern Fajum ; and Theox3hrastus§ mentions the occurrence of 

 the olive tree in the oases of the Libyan desert, where it may still 

 be met with in abundance. Fruits of the olive tree have not yet 

 been found in the tombs, although the hard stone would have 

 lasted well. On the other hand, there is to be found in the Berlin 

 EgyjDtian Museum an object consisting of five bundles each of three 

 olive twigs bound together by strips of palm leaves and united 

 into one whole bundle. The twigs were easily recognised, from a 

 few leaves still remaining, as those of the olive. The scaly 

 hairs, appearing under the microscope like ornamental stars, 

 which cause the silvery glitter on the under side of the leaf, 

 were in good preservation. Lepsius conjectures that this bundle 

 (Passalacqua Cat., No. 1597), which recalls the rods used in our 

 days in the j)unishment of childi-en, had been used for a similar 



* The chief locality bears after the palm the name of Wadi Dellach. (On 

 pafje 4 of Petermaun and Harsenstoin's map of Central Africa this valley is 

 called, according to Von Beurmann [Text,Ep. (2)], ' DoUa.') — A. 



f [Compare Ascherson, ' Sitzungsbericht der Gesellsch. uaturf. Freunde, 

 1877. Page lU.—A. and M.] 



+ P. 809, Casaub. Comp. E. Meyer, I. c. p. 154, 155. [This place is 

 incorrectly referred by Dr. Pfund {Flora, 1874, p. 41.:3) to Arsinoe on the lied 

 Sea (in district of the modern Suez). — A. and M.] 



§ • Hist. Plant.' Lib. iv. cap. 2, 9. 



