830 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



Uiiger, ' Sitzungsberichte k. Akad. Wiss. AVien/ Bd. xxiii. Hft. i. 

 p. 204, 1857, suggested the countries on the eastern side of the 

 Persian Gulf as the centre whence in the very earliest times 

 of commerce and international intercourse this plant was carried 

 over Arabia, Persia, Hindustan, and North Africa. But he, in a 

 later Memoir, published after travel in Egypt, ib. xxxviii. pp. "J^^ 

 104-106, 1859, quotes Delile as averring that, valeat quantum 

 valeat, the Egyptians themselves considered that Arabia Felix was 

 the original country of the date-palm ; and by twice (11. cc.) men- 

 tioning the fact that Egypt itself is called not only the land of the 

 sycamore, but also the land of the palm-tree, he would appear to 

 assign the same weight to that tradition which I have felt justified 

 in assigning to those embodied in the Accadian Inscriptions, 

 linger himself suggests, though very guardedly, that the date may 

 have been imported into Lower from Upper Egypt. He is, as such 

 a botanist would be sure to be, careful to disclaim any acceptance 

 of the cogency which others have assigned to an argument based on 

 the luxuriance of growth which the tree does attain in the locality 

 in question. ' There is nothing in all this, however, to hinder us 

 from supposing that the palm does so flourish there, because in its 

 migration from the north southwards it came in the latter place for 

 the first time upon the soil best suited to it.' 



Martins, on the other hand (1 c. iii. 'Z6^), uses this very argument 

 for assigning the original site of the date-palm to the southern part 

 of Tunis, ' Blad el-Dscherid,' as he writes the name of the locality, 

 h. e. arida terra, ' falso nuncupata Biledulgerid,' as he adds, ' Beled 

 el-Jerid,' I may add as named in Johnston's Royal Atlas in lat. 

 N. 34°, long. S. 10°. 'Quo loco,' says Martius^, ' solidae conspici- 



* In the same African connection in Martius's grand book I find the two following 

 passages, which are in themselves a lecture on the extent to which man has modified 

 the landscape of Southern and Northern Africa, both by acclimatising there plants, 

 some useful merely, some beautiful, some both, from 'regions Caesar never knew,' 

 China, namely, and America. The maize might have been added to the importations 

 specified in those quotations. Speaking of the date-palm Martins says (p. 264) : 

 ' In Promontorium Bonae Spei introducta, nunc per calidiorum regionum hortos sparsa 

 et una cum Solano tuberose, Tritico rep. colitur.' Speaking of the North Coast and 

 the planities Tadschurae, he writes : ' Palma illic est splendidissimum decus sylvnrum 

 Cttri aurantiorum quae Opuniiis cinguntur.'' The potato, the orange, and the hedges 

 of opuntias set round them were as little known to 'all the world' of the Mediter- 

 ranean as the gas, the coal, the glaze of our pottery, and the tea, coffee, and tobacco, 

 which, though sold by the Spicier in every Englisli hamlet, and making up, as some 

 persons will say, but a Philistine tale, are yet become absolute necessaries of life even 



