COMMERCIAL DATE GROWING 53 



alone guarantee the purity of the race and especially 

 (the identity of) the sex." 



Text Book of Egyptian Agriculture, published by 

 Department of Agricultural and Technical Education, 

 Ministry of Education, Cairo, 1911; Ed. by G. P. 

 Foaden, sec. -gen. Khedivial Agr. Soc., Cairo, and F. 

 Fletcher, principal of the School of Agriculture, Gizeh : 



"Dates are propagated either by seed or by 

 suckers. As with most other fruits, dates do not 

 always come true to seed, hence the only sure way to 

 obtain good dates is to obtain suckers from trees of 

 established excellence. Propagation from seed is of 

 little value when we desire to obtain dates of the same 

 quality as those from which seeds were obtained, or 

 when we wish to obtain a correct proportion of male 

 to female trees. Again, seedling palms are usually 

 poor, and much later in maturing their fruit. Gener- 

 ally the fruits from such trees have large seeds and 

 little flesh." 



Woodrow, the acknowledged authority on horti- 

 culture in India at the present day, says in his "Trop- 

 ical Gardening" (1910), that he planted seeds of good 

 imported dates of known varieties; of the resulting 

 palms a few were good, but the rest he could not dis- 

 tinguish in any way from Phoenix sylvestris, the wild 

 date palm of India, the fruit of which is worthless. 



Dr. E. Bonavia, the pioneer authority on date 

 culture in India, says in the Indian Agriculturist for 

 May 16, 1885, "In the Lucknow garden alone there 

 are upwards of 252 seedlings, varying from twelve to 

 thirteen years old, and I am informed that there are 

 hardly two alike." 



W. T. Swingle, "The Date Palm," Bui. No. 53, 

 Bureau of Plant Industry, Washington, 1904, p. 18: 



