PALMS AND BAMBOOS 225 



for though Pliny says that there were many sorts of 

 palms, it is evident from his descriptions that he was 

 only speaking of varieties of the date palm. In English 

 literature the word occurs in all the old vocabularies, 

 but simply as a translation. Neckham described it, 

 but probably had never seen it ; but from the frequent 

 allusions to it in the Bible, the early Eastern travellers 

 took full notice of it and described it minutely. It 

 seems very certain that neither Shakespeare nor Milton 

 had seen the living tree, for Shakespeare only speaks 

 of it as a proverbial and legendary tree, and Milton's 

 only epithet for it (in three places) is ' the branching 

 palme,' a most unfitting epithet, for it is the character- 

 istic of almost all palms, except the doom palm, to 

 be unbranched, and he speaks of a 'palmy hilloc' 

 in connection with lawns, and downs, and groves, 

 thornless roses, and grapes. Both Parkinson and 

 Gerard describe the trees, but do not say that they had 

 seen them, though they both tried, and not success- 

 fully, to rear young plants from the fruits, which, under 

 the name of finger apples, had been imported into 

 England from very early times. When the living 

 plant was first grown in England I cannot discover; 

 but Miller grew the date palm in 1731, and in 1768 

 five species are recorded to be growing at Kew. 



It would be too long a task to enter into all the 

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