270 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



The fruit which is called * date,' grows below the leaves in clus- 

 ters ; and is of a sweet and agreeable taste. A considerable part of 

 the inhabitants of Egypt, of Arabia, and of Persia, subsist almost 

 entirely on its fruit. They boast also of its medicinal virtues. Their 

 camels feed upon the date stone. From the leaves they make 

 couches, baskets, bags, mats, and brushes ; from the branches, cages 

 for their poultry, and fences for their gardens ; from the fibres of the 

 boughs, thread, ropes, and rigging; from the sap is prepared a 

 spirituous liquor; and the body of the tree furnishes fuel : it is even 

 said, that from one variety of the palm tree, meal has been extract- 

 ed, which is found among the fibres of the trunk, and has been used 

 for food. 



Several parts of the Holy Land, no Je-'s than of Idumfea, that lay 

 contiguous to it, are described by the ancients to have abounded 

 with date trees. Judea, particularly, is typified in several coins of 

 Vespasian, by a disconsolate woman sitting under a palrn tree. It 

 may be presumed, therefore, that the palm tree was formerly much 

 cultivated in the Holy Land. 



In Deut. xxxiv. 3, Jericho is called ' the city of palm trees ; ' be- 

 cause, as Josephus, Strabo, and Pliny have remarked, it anciently 

 abounded with them : and Dr. Shaw states that there are several of 

 them yet at Jericho, where there is the convenience they require of 

 being often watered ; where likewise the climate is warm, and the 

 soil sandy, or such as they thrive and delight in. At Jerusalem, 

 Sichem, and other places to the northward, however, Dr. Shaw 

 states that he rarely saw above two or three of them together ; and 

 even these, as their fruit rarely or ever comes to maturity, are of no 

 further service, than (like the palm tree of Deborah) to shade the 

 retreats or sanctuaries of their Sheikhs, as they might formerly have 

 been sufficient to supply the solemn processions with branches. 

 See John xii. 13. From the present condition and quality of the 

 palm trees in this part of the Holy Land, Dr. Shaw concludes that 

 they never were either numerous or fruitful here, and that there- 

 fore the opinion of Reland and others, that Phrenice is the same 

 with ' a country of date trees' does not appear probable ; for if such 

 a useful and beneficial plant had ever been cultivated there to ad- 

 vantage, it would have still continued to be cultivated, as in Egypt 

 and Barbary. 



It is a singular fact, that these trees are male and female, and that 

 the fruit which is produced by the latter, will be dry and insipid 

 without a previous communication with the former. 



The palm-tree arrives at its greatest vigor about thirty years after 

 transplantation, and continues so seventy years afterwards, bearing 

 yearly fifteen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them weighing 

 fifteen or twenty pounds. After this period, it begins gradually to 

 decline, and usually falls about the latter end of its second century. 

 'To be exalted,' or 'to flourish like the palm tree,' are as just and 

 proper expressions, suitable to the nature of this pjant,as 'to spread 

 abroad like a cedar,' Psal. xcii. 12. 



