PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR FRUITS. SOS 



Egypt. The number of Persian, Arabic, and Berber 

 names is incredible.-^ Some are derived from the Hebrew 

 word, others from unknown sources. They often apply 

 to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated 

 varieties, which again shows ancient cultivation in 

 different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not dis- 

 covered a name for the date-palm in the language of the 

 Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek 

 name, "phoenix, refers simply to Phoenicia and the 

 Phoenicians, possessors of the date-palm.^ The names 

 dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew 

 dialect.^ No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be 

 inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western 

 India are not very ancient. The Indian climate does 

 not suit the species.* The Hindustani name hhurnia is 

 borrowed from the Persian. 



Further to the East the date-palm remained long 

 unknown. The Chinese received it from Persia, in the 

 third century of our era, and its cultivation was resumed 

 at different times, but they have now abandoned it.^ As 

 a rule, beyond the arid region which lies between the 

 Euphrates and the south of the Atlas and the Canaries, 

 the date-palm has not succeeded in similar latitudes, or 

 at least it has not become an important culture. It might 

 be grown with success in Australia and at the Cape, but 

 the Europeans who have colonized these regions are not 

 satisfied, like the Arabs, with figs and dates for their 

 staple food. I think, in fine, that in times anterior to 

 the earliest Egyptian dynasties the date-palm already 

 existed, wild or sown here and there by wandering tribes, 

 in a narrow zone extending from the Euphrates to the 

 Canaries, and that its cultivation began later as far as 

 the north-west of India on the one hand and the Cape 

 de Verde Islands ^ on the other, so that the natural area 



^ See C. Ritter, ubi supra, ^ Helm, Culturpjlanzen, edit. 3, p. 234. 



3 C. Ritter, ibid., p. 828. * According to Roxburgli, Royle, etc. 



* Bretschneider, Study and Value, etc., p. 31. 



® According to Sctmidt, Fl. d. Cap.-Verd. Isl., p. 168, the date- 

 palm is rare in these islands, and is certainly not wild. Webb and 

 Berthelot, on the contrary, assert that in some of the Canaries it is 

 apparently indigenous {Hist. Nat. des Canaries, Botanique, iii. p. 289). 



