138 



DATE-PALM. 



[CHAP. XXVIII. 



niable gas was observed to escape. That such 

 upright buried trees are not everywhere to be met 

 with in this part of the delta, I ascertained from 

 Mr. Bringier, At his house, in the suburbs of 

 New Orleans, a well has been sunk to the depth of 

 twenty-seven feet, and the strata passed through 

 consisted of sandy clay, with only here and there 

 some buried timber and roots. 



Walking through one of the streets of New 

 Orleans, near the river, immediately north of the 

 Catholic cathedral, I was surprised to see a fine date- 

 palm, thirty feet high, growing in the open air. (See 

 fig- 8.) 



Fig. 8. 



Pere Antoines Date-palm (Phoenix dactylifera). 



Mr. Wilde told me, that in 1829, in the island of 



