502 



The JorRNAL of Heredity 



the crop. There are several contracts 

 of the period of Hammurabi, which 

 relate to orchards, all of which mention 

 dates as the jmncipal, indeed the only 

 fruit, cro}). The natural inference is 

 that orchards in Babylonia always 

 contained dates, and that planting an 

 orchard meant getting palms ready to 

 bear. Four years, then, was the time 

 allowed for "this — a limit that makes 

 vegetative ])ropagation absolutely neces- 

 sary.- Indeed, if the Babylonians could 

 get a pa\'ing crop in the fifth year, they 

 did better than most Arab cultivators 

 do today in Babylonia, although Cali- 

 fomians expect to do as well as that, by 

 the use of scientific methods. 



Scholars now believe 5000 B.C. to be 

 as early as any settlement in Babylonia 

 can be traced. Even at that time, 

 however, dates must have been one of 

 the most imi:)ortant products, as they 

 1 perhaps were to the Semites in their 

 earlier Arabian home some thousands 

 of years previously. When we first be- 

 gin to get written records from Baby- 

 lonia, we find that the palm holds a 

 jjrominent place. One of the oldest 

 tablets in the world is a Babylonian 

 fragment now in New York, which 

 may go back to 3000 B.C., and contains 

 a rude jjicture of a date ]3alm, in con- 

 nection with a memorandum of an 

 oflfering to some temple. 



THE DRINK OF LIFE. 



At that period, and doul)tless far 

 earlier, the palm was valued not only 

 for its fruit, but perhaps almost as 

 much for the beverage which its sap 

 furnished. This appears in early in- 

 scriptions under the name of "the 

 drink of life;" "as far back as the period 

 of the formation of the cuneiform script 

 this was the name given to the date 

 wine of Babylonia," says Sayce. Bcc- 

 cari interestingly discusses the way 

 in which the jjossibility of jjroducing 

 an intoxicating liquor from the ])alm 

 came to be known. "That ]jrimitive 

 man could at a very early ]jeriod dis- 

 cover the manner of obtaining a fer- 

 mentable liquor from the date palm is 



easily understood," he thinks. "When 

 he learned that by cutting out the 

 terminal bud of the palm he obtained a 

 delicious food, he also fovmd that as a 

 result of that operation, a sweetish 

 liquid fiowed abundantly from the 

 wound. Nothing more natural, in a 

 country where water is scarce, than 

 that this liquid should have been caught 

 in some kind of a receptacle and used 

 for drinking. But in the meanwhile the 

 liquor fermented; and thus perchance, 

 earlier than the juice of the grape, man 

 may have learned the method of making 

 alcohol, and to feel the effects of its 

 inebriating power." 



Beccari is no doubt right in emphasiz- 

 ing the tremendous importance this 

 discovery must have had, as an agent of 

 natural selection. While palm wine is 

 not to be compared with distilled liquors, 

 in alcoholic content, it yet contains so 

 much alcohol, when fermented, as to 

 be decidedly dangerous. The French 

 have recently prohibited its manufac- 

 ture in Algeria, partly because the na- 

 tives were destroying their plantations 

 in order to satisfy their appetites for 

 alcohol, but largely because the bever- 

 age led to incessant breaches of the jDcace. 

 The influence of alcohol in injuring 

 germ plasm is becoming better attested 

 each year, yet most of the germ plasm 

 now exposed to its ravages has gone 

 through centuries of natural selection, 

 when the strains which showed the 

 least resistance to it were cut off. The 

 havoc that must have been wrought 

 by palm wine, when first discovered 

 and used by a peo])le who had never 

 undergone any selection against alcohol, 

 can only be imagined by remembering 

 how the American Indian fared under 

 similar circumstances. 



THE MYSTERY OF SEX. 



Added to its \'alue as a producer of 

 food and drink, the date palm ])os- 

 sessed another element of intense in- 

 terest to the dwellers of Babylonia and 

 the shores of the Persian Gulf in its 

 dioeciousness — female and male flowers 

 being borne on different palms. The 



* Sc-e R. F. Harper, The Cofk- of HainiTiural)i, p. 5.S, 1904, and Schorr, Urkunden dos allhaby- 

 lonistht-n Zivil-und Prozt-ssrcchts, pj). 1X9-194, 1913. I owe this and numerous otlier valuable 

 suggestions lo Dr. Geo. A. Barton <>f Bryn Mawr College. 



