834 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF OEQANIC NATURE 



these latter pistilliferous trees. Of course this statement would 

 need supplementation by one which he may very well have supposed 

 his readers would take for granted, to the effect' that the Nasamones 

 (and probably the Garamantes) brought the male flowers from a 

 distance, carefully selecting those liberaliori quodam v'lgore ac pleniori 

 hahituy just as Kaempfer, p. 672, tells us the Persian date-farmers 

 did ; this being, in fact, pretty nearly the whole of what is required 

 in the way of cultivating the date-palm. The palms resorted to^ 

 at least by the Nasamones, were large ; they could not, therefore, 

 have been wild date-palms ; and being thus proved to be more or 

 less under the care of man, they are, secondly, proved to have been 

 even more under that care and more dependent upon it than culti- 

 vated palms elsewhere, inasmuch as the pollen necessary for ferti- 

 lising their flowers had to be brought to them from a distance, the 

 bridging over of which could only be effected by man's intervention 

 at fixed intervals. My argument, in other words, lies in the fact 

 that a tribe, which, being of very priscan habits and customs, 

 cannot be supposed to have borrowed much from its more civilised 

 neighbours, was, nevertheless, credited in the time of Herodotus 

 with possessing groves of cultivated and exclusively female date- 

 palms, which bore large and, we may perhaps infer, excellent dates, 

 as they still continue to do. 



We have furnished to us in modern times a verifiable history 

 very closely parallel with that which I here suggest ; the Elaeis 

 guineensis is undoubtedly, as a cultivated plant, an acquisition of 

 negro minds; and as Hartmann says, 1. c. p. 118, this acquisition 

 has been made for us by a race which still carries on the practice of 

 human sacrifices ; and that in sight of European factories and 

 European steamboats, much as the Nasamones, whom I suppose to 

 have discovered the cultivation of another palm, carried on their 

 polyandry almost within sight of the Egyptian pyramids. ' The 

 thing that hath been is the thing that shall be.' 



The picture before you from Kaempfer's ' Amoenitates Exoticae,' 

 p. 711, Tab. iii. Ease. iv. 1711, coupled with his comment^ upon 

 the scene of enjoyment which it represents, and in which the palm- 



^ * Hi sunt palmicolarum in messe, ut sic loquar, dactylifera lusus magis quam labores, 

 neutiquam cum nostratium agricolarum infinitis occupationibus comparandi. Heu 

 ilias hie laborum ! dum agros effringimus, subaramus et resulcamus ; dum occamus et 

 liramus, runcamus et refarrimus. . . Secus sentias de ambrosiis dapibus Persarum et 

 Arabum ; hae gratis omnino et solo aknae naturae munere conferuntur.' 



