THE DATE. 95 



downward curving leaves or fronds, as they are called, 

 marked witli no intricate network, but simply by parallel 

 veins connected by transverse bars. Developing its new 

 woody matter in the interior as its name endogen or 

 inward grower denotes yet restricted by Nature from 

 extending its substance far in a horizontal direction, the 

 continual internal pressure causes the exterior to become 

 dense and hard, though surrounded by no distinct separ- 

 able bark ; and, unable to expand in circumference, it 

 still presses upward till it reaches an altitude far beyond 

 the general proportions of its bulkier exogenous brethren, 

 and stands erect in slender stateliness, a graceful and 

 virgin-like form. 



That it was the nature of palm-trees to grow in this 

 manner was a fact which Lindley acknowledges to have 

 been known to Theophrastus, who speaks distinctly of the 

 difference between exogenous and endogenous wood; 

 though he was not aware that it extended to a consider- 

 able part of the vegetable kingdom, separating it, indeed, 

 into two grand divisions. That particular palm which 

 bears the date fruit became generally known at a very 

 early period, for it is the palm of the Scriptures, so early 

 mentioned in sacred record as the first food found by the 

 wandering Israelites in the wilderness, when " they came 

 to Elim, where were twelve wells of water and three score 

 and ten <^afe-trees," for it is thus that the passage stands 

 in the old English Bibles of the 16th century, wherein 

 what is now translated "palm" is constantly rendered by 

 the term " date "-tree. It was too, in all probability, the 

 palm earliest known to the Greeks and Bom an s, among 

 whom it was held sacred to the Muses. The fruit of one 

 variety " we " says Pliny, " consecrate to the worship of 

 the gods; but they are called cJiydcei (from the Greek 

 Icydaios, vulgar or common) by the Jews, a nation re- 

 markable for the contempt which they manifest of the 

 divinities " ; a comment which seems to show that the 

 word must have been used by the Hebrews in this case 

 in the same sense in which it'was by St. Peter, when he- 

 objected to eat of anything " common or unclean ; " but it 

 was probably only when the fruit was polluted by being 



