826 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF OKQANIC NATURE 



and firs by^ man's agency; I may fitly close those details by 

 attempting something as regards that < f one of the palm tribe. 

 For, though Leopold von Buch was wrong in holding that the two 

 natural orders were altogether mutually exclusive as regards natural 

 geographical distribution, as a voyage in the Mediterranean, or the 

 sight of Martins' picture of Brakea dulcis (vol. iii. taf. 162) side by 

 side with a true pine in Mexico, teaches us, there can be no doubt 

 that Caesar and his countrymen were, speaking generally, right in 

 holding the fir and the beech to be as characteristic of Gaul and 

 Britain as their repeated allusions and their coins show them to 

 have thought the palm was of Palestine and the adjacent countries, 

 at least eastward and southward. 



What then do we know, firstly, as to the original home or 

 botanical region to which the date-palm, Phoenix dactylifera^ belongs? 

 and secondly, what can we surmise as to the particular spot in that 

 area in which that tree was first made available as a cultivated 

 plant, and subjected to those human influences which three of my 

 pictures are intended to illustrate ? 



As to the first of these questions there is no doubt, and no 

 occasion for any very lengthy answer. The region which Grisebach 

 names, after its principal constituent element, simply ' Sahara,' 

 and which stretches over more than ninety degrees of longitude 

 from Macaronesia to Multania, from the Canaries, that is, to the 

 Great Desert of Rajputana, and which comprehends not only the 

 Sahara strictly so-called, but cis-Saharan Africa also, from the 

 longitude (E. 10°) of Tunis eastward, and not only Old Egypt 

 and Arabia, but young ^ Egypt,' or Sinde also, is the botanical 

 region of the date-palm. Sir Joseph Hooker (' Morocco and the 

 Great Alas,' 1879, p. 409) has pointed out that there are many 

 Canarian plants which form an exceedingly interesting group, the 

 members of which, though chiefly Egypto-Arabian, are found to 

 extend in some instances even into Western India, and he suggests 

 that 'it is not unreasonable to suppose that such have covered 

 Africa in a sub'tropical latitude, and thus reached the Canaries 

 under conditions now operating.' Other plants, therefore, if not 

 other trees, may have spread over the same area, whether by man's 

 aid or without it, and may be taken as equally characteristic of it, 

 even though they may not need so much ' water to their feet and 

 fire to their heads.' It is, ]per contra^ I may remark, by a sur- 



