362 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



latitudes, thoug^h in those only it matures its fruit. 

 There are greenhouse specimens in many parts of 

 England. Some of the more luxuriant parts of the 

 province of Valencia, in the south-east of Spain, have 

 very fine forests of date-palms, from which, as well 

 as from the neighbourhood of Genoa, palm-branches 

 are exported. There are date-palms upon the coast 

 of Gallicia, near Ferrol and Corunna; but the fruit 

 on them does not come to maturity. There is abun- 

 dance of palms in the gardens of Naples ; and they 

 are still finer and more numerous in that part of 

 Sicily in the neighbourhood of Palermo, which, 

 from the fertility of its soil, and the variety and 

 beauty of its productions, has the name of " the 

 golden shell." They are also to be met with in 

 some parts of the south of France, though they 

 rarely, if ever, ripen their fruit in that coiuitr)-. There 

 are, in particvdar, two very majestic specimens grow- 

 ing in the open air in the Botanical Garden at Tou- 

 lon ; but these, so far as we have heard, have not yet 

 flowered. As greenhouse plants, with heat in the 

 colder season, they have been introduced into Eng- 

 land for about a century ; and the celebrated Miller, 

 of the Botanical Garden at Chelsea, is reported to 

 have been the first cultivator. The Messrs. Lod- 

 diges, of Hackney, have palms of considerable 

 height growing under glass ; there are also some 

 fine palms at the Botanical Garden at Kew. 



The date-palm is a very slow-growing tree ; and 

 even in the soil and climate that are most congenial, 

 old trees do not gain above a foot in height in five 

 years, so that, supposing the increase uniform, the 

 age of a tree, sixty feet high, cannot be less than 

 three hundred years. Dr. Shaw says that the palm 

 of Barbary usually falls about the latter end of its 

 second century. 



