vin DATES IN NOKTH AMEEICA 91 



The next serious attempt was made from 1848 

 to 1880, when the Americans, as distinguished 

 from people of Spanish descent, were beginning to 

 develop the west. They also grew their date 

 plants from seeds, but they got better seeds, brought 

 from the region of the Persian Gulf. Some of the 

 trees so reared bore good fruit, but relatively few 

 of them did so, and again there was a great pre- 

 dominance of pollen-bearing trees. The methods of 

 cultivation also were not well understood; so that 

 though these continued efforts produced some fruitful 

 palms, yet they did not produce nearly enough to 

 supply the demand in America for good dried dates. 



After some time it was recognised that the 

 only way to start date-growing on a considerable 

 scale was to get suckers from the good kinds of 

 Arabian dates. Young date-palms, not the old 

 ones, produce suckers round the bottom, after some- 

 thing the same fashion as was described in the 

 case of the banana. The Arabs never sow date 

 seeds. They mark carefully in their gardens the 

 best kinds of dates, and then the suckers from the 

 young plants of these kinds are taken and used to 

 start new plantations. It is, of course, only the 

 fruit-bearing palms that are reproduced in this way, 

 and thus the Arabs avoid getting a great number 

 of useless plants, such as the Spanish Fathers got. 

 That is the first advantage of their method. 



