832 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



occurrence of a superiorly civilised assailing an iuferiorly civilised 

 race by means of strong drink. He tells us how Cambyses sent a 

 cask of palm- wine, presumably brought with him from his own 

 country, as a present to the Aethiopians, previously called 'blameless' 

 by Homer. The Egyptians, also, according to Herodotus, ii. 86, 

 employed palm-wine (probably, when we compare this passage with 

 the others already cited, from Babylonia) in the process of embalm- 

 ing. I have set up this argument, but I think I may knock it 

 down, and thereby save some of my friends some trouble, by 

 observing that in England we ought not to think that because a 

 country shows pre-eminent skill in manufacturing raw material, 

 that therefore that raw material must even have been grown, not 

 to say, originally found growing wild, in that country. Fusel oil, 

 for example, a product analogous in its operation to palm-wine, is 

 manufactured in this land out of potatoes ; but potatoes are not 

 thereby shown to have been first cultivated either in Great Britain 

 or Ireland. 



I gather from Martins that ' Celsius in Hierobotanico operam 

 dat ut Palaestinam tanquam veram hujus arboris patriam esse 

 ostendat.' 



I, in my turn, venture to advocate the claims of the Nasamones 

 who dwelt around the south-eastern extremity of the Syrtis majoi\ 

 now known as the Gulf of Sidra (long. E. 20°), to be considered as 

 the race which first cultivated the palm ; and with them I should 

 couple those of the Garamantes of Fezzan. What I have to say 

 about them is based mainly upon the apparently truthful and 

 certainly life-like account which Herodotus gives of them in three or 

 four passages, i. 32 and iv. 172, 182, 183, none of which Martins 

 refers to in his enumeration of profane writers in contradistinction 

 to the sacred writers who mention date-palms referred to by Celsius; 

 but partly also upon a single passage of Diodorus Siculus, iii. 4. 

 We find thus that the Nasamones were a numerous and powerful, 

 but certainly a very far from civilised people. They combined poly- 

 gamy with polyandry, much as the Massagetae did at the same 

 time. Some of their other practices combine several of the notes 

 of a priscan people, such as the veneration of ancestors, and the 

 regard for justice which has made the words Trollorum fides 

 proverbial ; and finally those social feelings which are indicated by 

 the words, i. 32, avhpQ>v hwaa-T^wv Traibas r/3/3tJras, and which 



