DATES OF EGYPT AND THE SUDAN". 3 



6,000,000 date trees enumerated for taxation in Egypt, it is safe to 

 assert that two-thirds are of the balady, or seedling, type of trees, of 

 which the greater number produce fruit of low quality which is 

 consumed by the poorer people in the immediate vicinity. 



Among these, however, may occur occasional varieties of superior 

 excellence, in rare instances ranking with any of the sorts now in 

 cultivation. In a population of more advanced ideas in horticulture 

 such varieties would be propagated to the utmost limit and their 

 dissemination made as rapid as the slow nature of the date tree 

 would admit. In Egypt such varieties are often confined to the 

 garden in which they originated or to distribution among the imme- 

 diate family of the owner. In one instance which came to the writer's 

 knowledge a seedling variety not surpassed by any of the well- 

 known sorts of Egypt was still confined to the garden where it 

 originated, the property of a sheik of considerable wealth and posi- 

 tion. The "mother" tree and five "daughters" have passed the 

 age of producing offshoots. On a single "granddaughter" hangs the 

 fate of this valuable variety. 



The task of searching out such chance varieties of merit throughout 

 Egypt would be an interminable one, but the results would doubtless 

 repay the effort. 



Date culture in Egypt and the Sudan extends with scarcely an 

 interruption from the relatively cool Mediterranean coast up the 

 Nile Valley to the burning desert heat of Aswan, and is paralleled in 

 the Libyan oases of Fayum, Siwah, Baharieh, Farafreh, Dakhleh, and 

 Khargeh. Above the first cataract, owing to the narrowing of the 

 valley, the continuity of the date trees is a good deal broken, yet it 

 may be considered a continuation of the culture through Ibrim, past 

 Wadi Haifa, and up to the Sukkot region, around the great bow of the 

 river past old Dongola, Merowe, Abu Hamed, and Berber to Khar- 

 tum itself, where, entering the fringe of the great tropical rainy region, 

 the limit of practical date culture to the southward is reached. (PI. 

 I.) This gives a north-and-south extent to the Nile Valley date 

 culture of about 16 degrees of latitude, or approximately 1,100 miles, 

 about equivalent to the distance from the mouth of the Mississippi 

 River to Minneapolis and St. Paul. This is the longest continuous 

 north-and-south extension of dale growing to be found in the world, 

 and it becomes of peculiar interest from the range of temperatures 

 embraced and the differences in climatic conditions encountered. 

 The difference in i|i<- mean anniiaJ lemperature between Alexandria 

 and Khartum amounts to about 15 degrees F., though the average 

 difference for March, April, and May is over 21 degrees. This differ- 

 ence fa aol great when the difference in latitude is considered, 1 but 



> Tli<! difference In mean annual te mp er a ! ore bel •■■ een St. I'uul and New Orleans, the .similar distance 

 previously cited, is about 28 degree i Fahrenheit. 



