828 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



where it still grows, to Gibraltar. The solitary, and for this as 

 for other reasons unfertile, palms which we still see here and there 

 in the Aegean and along the region of the west and north shores 

 of Asia Minor, short of the Black Sea eastward, and which still 

 strike us as being something as alien to that landscape as was the 

 seedling-palm at Apollo's Delian temple to the eyes of the much- 

 travelled Ulysses (Odyss. vi. 162), have been planted there not as 

 * food-plants,' but ' animi voluptatisque caussa.' 



As regards the particular and single spot in the vast botanical 

 region, if particular and single spot there really was, upon the 

 longitudinally vast area of which the date-palm was brought under 

 that human influence which has since caused it to effloresce into 

 so many varieties, very various opinions have been advanced, and I 

 propose to add a fresh one to their number. It may appear at first 

 sight that such a discussion and such an attempt have in them- 

 selves an intrinsic futility. We do not need to refer to King 

 Juba's report of his exploratory voyage to the Canaries to learn 

 that the date-palm will bear dates even in an oceanic and un- 

 inhabited island, and some persons may think that we need only, 

 like the wits of Charles's time, to study ourselves and our sen- 

 sations to see how the forefathers of the Guanches, when they in 

 some post-Juban or post-Augustan period occupied the island, 

 would, under the stimulus of hunger alone, come to learn the art of 

 date-culture, ev^n if they had not brought the knowledge of it with 

 them. Still, I think, on the doctrine of chances, or, what comes to 

 the same thing, the principle ' Frustra fit per plura quod fieri 

 potest per pauciora,' as well as upon certain concrete arguments 

 furnished by the Egyptian monuments on the one hand, and by 

 certain curious but still life-like and truth-like stories on the other, 



et fructus fert, sed fructuum caro non plane excolitur, quum acerbi sit saporis, fructifi- 

 catio nulla, semina cassa : hue pertinet tractus littorum maris Mediterranei in Gallia 

 meridionali, in Italia, in Sardinia, item regionis Dalmatiae, Insulae lonicae, Graeciae- 

 que septentrionalis. Cujus zonae terminum septentrionalem posueris fortasse4i° 20'- 

 45° lat. bor. In tertia linea palam durat quidera sub divo, sed flores aut raros aut 

 nullos emittit : immo frondescit tantum ; cujus zonae terminus septentrionalis tendit 

 ut commemoravi, per insulas lacus Verbeni sub lat. bor. 46° media anni temperie a 

 12° usque ad 13° C. Arbor hie provivere potest, etiam si hiemis temperies inter- 

 dura sub frigoris gradum deprimatur dummodo ne nimis (forsan ad — 3° vel 4° C.) 

 accedat, quo frigoris etiam mali medicae, citri, aurantii, et myrti extingui atque 

 opprimi solent. Superior altitudinis terminus in monte Aetnae usque ad pedum 

 1400 vel 1680, teste viro cl. Philippio, adscendit.' 



