AND LOWER EGYPT. IO3 



It is easy to perceive that this species of palm- 

 tree has no other resembiarice to the date than the 

 general characters which constitute their genus ; 

 and that it differs from it in great and numerous 

 specific dissimilitudes. It is without reason then 

 that the Jesuit Siccard has asserted that the downs 

 are a kind of wild date-trees * ; and this observa- 

 tion is not foreign to the subject, for I have heard 

 the same error repeated by several persons, other- 

 wise very well informed. 



Another mistake propagated respecting the ^oz^w 

 is this : it has been pretended that the kind of 

 resinous gum, imported from Africa and the Indies 

 under the name oi bdeU'mm^ and which is nothing 

 else than the common and imperfect myrrh, 

 distilled from its stalks. It is a certain fact, how- 

 ever, that they extract from the palm-tree of 

 Thebai's neither gum nor any other sort of 

 analogous substance. 



The doum produces fruits twice a year. They 

 are round and rather longish ; their size is that of 

 an orange, but their form is irregular. They are 

 one of the means of subsistence to the miserable 

 part of the people of Upper Egypt. They take off 



* Mem. of Missions to the Levant, vol. v. p. 222. Gran- 

 ger has also confounded the doum with the wild date-tree.— 

 [Travels in Egypt, p. 240.] 



H 4 the 



