106 THE GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS. 



In the date palm, however, these means often 

 fail, and if unseasonable weather or accident 

 prevent it, the date crops are entirely ruined. 

 To prevent this, the Arabs, who have been 

 acquainted with these facts for ages, gather the 

 clusters of male flowers, and hang them over 

 the pistilline ones, and they even lay up stores 

 of pollen from year to year. In incursions into 

 hostile territories, the invading army often cuts 

 down the stamen -bearing palms, as one of the 

 most severe injuries they can inflict upon their 

 enemy. It is on record, that the threat of doing 

 so, on the part of those attacked, once warded off 

 an invasion. The grand seignior having medi- 

 tated an invasion of the city and territory of 

 Bassora, the prince of that country prevented 

 it, by giving out that he would destroy all 

 these palms on the first approach of the enemy, 

 and by that means cut off all supply of food 

 from them during the siege. Most of the in- 

 habitants of Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, subsist 

 principally upon its fruit. The harvest of 

 dates is expected, therefore, and attended with 

 as general rejoicing as the vintage of the south 

 of Europe. The crop sometimes fails, or is 

 destroyed by locusts, and then an universal 

 gloom overspreads the population. " What is 

 the price of dates at Mecca or Medina?" is 

 always the first question asked by a Bedouin 

 who meets a traveller on the road. 



That the date palm was anciently very plen- 

 tiful in Palestine we have abundant proof ; 

 ancient writers bear testimony to it, and on the 



