12 BULLETIN 271, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



tree instead of one-fifth of that sum, over £4,000,000 would be added 

 to the income of these people. This £4,000,000 a year added to the 

 value of the date crop of this narrow stretch of valley of about 500 

 miles in length would vastly change the economic conditions of 

 Upper Egypt. Of course, it would require years to bring about 

 such a change, to convince the native cultivators of the desirability 

 of such a change being the most difficult part of the problem. To 

 develop the market for the higher-priced product would also require 

 time. All of this suggests that the excellent work on dates already 

 begun by the horticultural division of the Egyptian Department of 

 Agriculture might profitably be very greatly expanded. 



In the upper end of the valley division the mean temperature rises 

 almost to that of the desert tropical, and the air is of a desert dryness. 

 Here it is not surprising that we find considerable numbers of the 

 date varieties from Nubia, the Sukkot country, and Dongola. What 

 may be considered their fancy varieties, the "Bartamoda," Gon- 

 deila, and Kulma, are represented by only a few trees, to be sure, 

 but the valuable dry date, Barakawi of Dongola (here called "lbrimi") 

 is a good deal planted, and apparently any seedling with a close 

 resemblance to it is admitted into the family. 



STJBDISTRICT OP THE LIBYAN OASES. 



The Libyan oases have a date industry related throughout the 

 series by the culture of one valuable packing variety, the Saidy. 

 (PL IV, fig. 1.) A number of other varieties, as the Frihy, Gazaly, 

 Kaiby, and Wedi, seem to be common to Siwah and Baharieh, but 

 are not known in Dakhleh and Khargeh. But the great export date 

 of all these oases is the Saidy. Whether, as the name suggests, this 

 was originally from that part of Upper Egypt known as "Es Siyd" is 

 wholly a matter of conjecture. The fact that it is scarcely at all 

 known there now would make this explanation doubtful. 



No data are available concerning the oasis of Siwah, either as to 

 weather conditions or the number of date trees. The only meteoro- 

 logical records for these oases are those kept at Mut, 1 the capital of 

 Dakhleh, which are given in the annual report of the Ministry of 

 Finance for the years 1905 to 1911, inclusive. The data here would 

 be fairly representative for Khargeh, but doubtless a few degrees too 

 warm for Baharieh and Siwah. Table I shows that the mean annual 

 temperature for Dakhleh is a little above a mean between Siut 

 (Assiut) and Aswan, while the dryness of the air is greater than at 

 Aswan and next to that of Wadi Haifa. The available heat units 

 above 64.4° F. reach 3,675, which is very close to the optimum for 

 the Deglet Noor at Tuggurt (Tougourt), in Algeria (quoted table 9, 



1 Pronounced " moot." 



