PRODUCED BY MAN. 827 



plusage of water to the head and a noxious quantity of heat to the 

 feet that the latitudinal limits, south and north parallels, of the 

 date-palm are given. If, as Dr. Daubeny suggested (' Lectures on 

 Climate,' 1863, p. 86), we have, as in certain truly tropical (and 

 continental) countries, heavy falls of rain during that particular 

 time of the year when the pollen should be carried to the pistilli- 

 ferous flower, this latter will not be fertilised (unless by man's 

 interference), the dioecious character of its flowers putting it thus, 

 as it does also Borassus fiabelli^ at a serious disadvantage as com- 

 pared with the cocoanut-palm ^, Cocos nucifem, whose company they, 

 in consequence perhaps of a sense of their inferiority, appear to 

 avoid. 



On the other hand, the requirement of a mean temperature of 

 from 70° to 81 '5° F. excludes the date-palm from bearing dates, 

 except under specially favourable, and therefore only locally pre- 

 valent conditions, eked out by human protection, on the north 

 shores of the Mediterranean ^ ; all the way from Alexandretta, 



^ It is not only the * tempest's wr.ath/ but also the ' battle's rage,' which the 

 dioecious character of the date-palm helps in the work of destruction. The pictures 

 from Lepsius's Egyptian Denkmaler which I have copied for this Lecture show that 

 this was known in the time of those * great old houses and fights fought long ago.' 

 History tells us that Norman and Saracen (see Admiral Smyth'^s 'Sicily,' p. 19, 

 Martius, iii. p. 263), Anjou and Arabian generals have, each alike, in defiance 

 either of the letter or of the spirit of their professed religion, or of both, cut down the 

 male palms, and so prevented pro tanto the reproduction of the tree with 360 uses to 

 mankind. The modern Arabs, according to Kohlfs, ' Afrikanische Reisen,' Aufl. 2, 

 1869, p. 70, cit. Hehn, 1. c. p. 513, appear sometimes even in very severe military 

 operations or devastations to spare the palm even when cutting down other fruit trees» 

 But Abd-el-Kader appears to have had some transgressions even as to palm-trees on 

 his conscience to repent of. The solitary palm, the existence of which von Baer 

 reports to us on a certain peninsula on the south shore of the Caspian, called in our 

 maps the Peninsula of Mejankal, but in his apparently, and curiously, the Peninsula 

 of Potemkin, is, I should think, a solitary survivor of some such proceedings as those 

 figured in my Egyptian pictures. Von Baer himself looks upon it as a survivor of 

 companions not destroyed by the art and malice of man, but by local refrigeration, due 

 to the extinction of certain volcanoes which were active even in comparatively recent 

 times. Verecunde dissentio. 



^ Martius writes on this subject, 1. c. iii. p. 263, as follows : 'Haec igitur habuimus 

 quae de incremento, quod arbor ilia capit in imperio florae per Europam meridio- 

 nalem patenti, diceremus. Ex quibus intelligi potest omnino ut nascatur arte effici, 

 cogitandumque nobis esse eam plures culturae gradus intra fines quos occupaverit 

 percurrere. Quae si ad summum ascenderit flores emitfcit, fructusque dulcis et boni 

 saporis edit, et si manu et arte accedente fecundetur, etiam semina ad propagandum 

 idonea gignit; quod fit in Hispaniae parte ad meridiem versus remotissima, in Sicilia, 

 in Graeciae promontoriis maxime ad meridiem vergentibus, etin insula Cypro (nimirum 

 sub lat. bor. 35° et medio calore annuo 18° C. ad 20'' C). In altera lona fiores quidem 



