682 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



History. — We do not feel competent to write a better account 

 of the history of the Date Palm than DeCandalle in his " Origin 

 of Cultivated Plants." His arguments are the following : — 



" The Date Palm has existed from prehistoric times in the 

 warm dry zone, which extends from Senegal to the basin of the 

 Indus, principally between parallels 15 and 30. It is seen here 

 and there further to the north, by reason of exceptional circum- 

 stances and of the aim which is proposed in its cultivation. Far 

 beyond the limit within which the fruit ripens every year, there is 

 a zone in which they ripen ill or seldom, and a further region 

 within which the tree can live, but without fruiting or even 

 flowering. These limits have been traced by de Martius, Carl 

 Hitter and myself. 



" As regards the Date Palm we can hardly rely on the more or 

 less proved existence of really wild indigenous individuals. Dates 

 are easily transported ; the stones germinate when sown in damp 

 soil near the source of a river, and even in the fissures of rocks. 

 The inhabitants of oases have planted or sown Date Palms in 

 favourable localities where the species perhaps existed before man, 

 and when the traveller comes across isolated trees at a distance 

 from dwellings, he cannot know that they did not spring from 

 stones thrown away by caravans. Historical and philological 

 data are of more value here, though doubtless from the antiquity of 

 cultivation they can only establish probabilities. 



" From Egyptian and Assyrian remains, as well as from tradi- 

 tion and the most ancient writings, we find that the Date Palm 

 grew in abundance in the region lying between the Euphrates and 

 the Nile. Egyptian monuments contain fruits and drawings of 

 the tree. Herodotus in a more recent age (fifth century before 

 Christ), mentions the wood of the Date Palms of Babylonia, and still 

 later Strabo used similar expressions about those of Arabia, whence 

 it seems that the species was commoner than it is now, and more 

 in the condition of a natural forest tree. On the other hand, 

 Carl Hitter makes the ingenious observation that the earliest 

 Hebrew books do not speak of the Date Palm as producing a fruit 

 valued as a food for man. David, about one thousand years before 

 Christ, and about seven centuries after Moses, does not mention the 





