106 OUR COMMON FRUITS. 



gracious law of Providence its habitat being chiefly where 

 little else can grow. It will not flourish in southern 

 latitudes, but attains perfection in the northern parts of 

 Africa, and forms a border along the margin of the Great 

 Desert, so abounding where so little other vegetation is 

 seen as to give a name to the region, called from it " Bile- 

 dulgeria," or the Land of Dates. The fruifc cannot ripen 

 beyond a line drawn from Syria to Spain, about 29 or 30 C 

 N. lat., though the tree will vegetate a few degrees far- 

 ther north ; it abounds in the gardens of Naples and 

 Sicily; is found in Valencia, Genoa, and the island of 

 Elba ; and even at Toulon two fine specimens are seen 

 growing in the Botanical Gardens in the open air. It 

 has been introduced, too, into Bordighiera, in the south of 

 [France, for the sake of the leaves, which are made use of 

 in spring by the Christians, in Palm Sunday ceremonials, 

 and in autumn by the Jews, during the celebration of the 

 Eeast of Tabernacles ; and near Elete, in Spain, is a com- 

 plete wood of no less than 200,000 date palms, the leaves 

 of which are bound up in mats till they are bleached 

 almost white, and then gathered and sent in ship-loads to 

 Italy, for Palm Sunday processions, and to Madrid, 

 where a house without its blessed palm-branch at Easter 

 would seem as incomplete as an English dwelling without 

 a sprig of holly at Christmas. 



An attempt once made to cultivate the date-palm in 

 Jamaica, proved a failure, but it grows in India, though 

 it does not ripen fruit well in that latitude, and is there- 

 fore valued chiefly for the sake of the sap, which is manu- 

 factured into a coarse sort of sugar, that harmless-seeming 

 but mystic goar, which, as the chosen offering of Kali, 

 held so prominent a place in the fearful ceremonies of 

 Thuggee. The juice is extracted by means of tapping 

 the tree in cold weather ; and Dr. Roxburgh states that 

 each trees yields annually from 120 to 240 pints, pro- 

 ducing from 7 to 8 Ibs. of sugar. At the time when Dr. 

 "Roxburgh wrote, 10,000 cwt. of date sugar was made 

 yearly in Bengal, whence considerable quantities were ex- 

 ported to England and elsewhere, date sugar selling for 

 about one-fourth less than cane sugar, 



