52 MADEIRA METEOROLOGIC. FART v. 



a fruit whose full perfection demands cold winters to 

 precede hot, dry, and sunshiny summers. Under abnor- 

 mal circumstances of European wars and " most favoured 

 nation " custom - duties, several past generations of 

 Madeirese grew rich by making wine in abundance for 

 artificially promoted markets. But during the last thirty 

 years melancholy retribution has overtaken them all. 

 For their vines have almost entirely perished of diseases 

 rendered fatal to them by overtaxed Nature ; the pala- 

 tial homes of the grandee planters have either fallen into 

 ruin or become the possession of strangers, while the 

 sugar-cane is once more being looked to as the island's 

 best friend. 1 



Or take another case of two plants still more widely 

 opposed to each other. There, where the plains of 

 Palestine descend from their usual high level to join with 

 the lowlands of Arabia, what an essential source of food 

 to the sons of Ishmael is not the fruit of the date palm 

 (Pkcenix dactylifera) ? "I weep (with joy) when I 

 remember Feiran," was the song of a grand old Sheikh 

 of the Sinaitic Peninsula ; for that valley amongst rocky 

 mountains is full of date palms, which go on producing 

 their gorgeous fruit through the hot summer and hotter 

 and drier autumn, when everything else is burnt up 

 around them. But in Madeira such a man would find 



1 A little grape-growing and wine-making also, chiefly under British 

 auspices, has begun once again ; and the quality of the produce, as testified 

 by the exports of the house of Henry Dru Drury, is said to be very good. 



