^8 H'e^t Americaji Scientist. 



Ba^s and mats are m'lde out of the leaves ; the fibres supply a 

 rude, rough cordage; and the leaf-stalks all kinds of basket and 

 wicker work. 



The Date palm is the palm tree alluded to in Scripture, and in 

 the oasis of the Great Desert springs up. a fountain of life, for the 

 refreshment of the traveler and the sustenance of the Arab no- 

 made. It generally attains a height of fifty feet, is crowned with 

 a crest of from forty to eighty glaucous pinnated leaves, and 

 flowers at the age of twelve years. 



In Egypt we meet with the Doum palm, a tree of shorter stat- 

 ure, but remarkable for the repeated forkings of its stems. From 

 the sweet and yet pungent flavor of its fruit, it has been popularly 

 called the gingerbread tree ; but to an European stoma h the 

 gingerbread would prove sadly difficult of digestion. The kernel 

 resembles ivory, and the natives fashion it into beads and other 

 small articles. 



Both the Date and the Doum palms are found in Egypt, but 

 the former disappears as the traveler descends the Nile, and enters 

 Nubia. Generally speaking, it may be said that the Doum is the 

 Egyptian, as the Date is the Saharan palm tree. Its value is not 

 so great as that of its famous congener, nor are its uses so various ; 

 but then the Egyptian is less dependent upon it than the Arab 

 upon the date. To the inhabitants of the Sahara the latter is food, 

 comfort, wealth, nay, life. It is easy to understand, says a French 

 writer, the gratitude cherished by the Arab towards this tree, 

 which thrives in the sandy waste, draws sustenance from brackish 

 \\ater fatal to almost any other plant, preserves its freshness when 

 all around it decays and withers under the rays of an implacrible 

 sun, and resists the tempests wnich bow its flexible crest but can- 

 not tear up its solidly-planted roots It may be said, without ex- 

 aggeration, that a single tree has peopled the Desert ; that, with- 

 out it, the nomade tribes of Western Africa must cease to exist 



What the Date palm is to the Arab, the Cocoanut palm (Cocos 

 nucifera) is to the Polynesian. Originally it would seem to have 

 been a native only of the Indian coasts and South Sea Islands, 

 but it is now diffused over all the tropical world. There" are 

 about eighteen known species, of which only one, the Cocoa-nut 

 itself does not belong to America, but flourishes best in the 

 neighborhood of the sea- coast. It is the crown and glory of 

 the coral islets which stud the sapphire expanse of the Pacific 

 Ocean; its cylindrical and slender stem, about two feet in di- 

 ameter and from 60 to 100 feet in height, with its crest of green, 

 drooping, pinnated leaves, generally sixteen to twenty in number, 

 and from twelve to twenty feet m length, forming a conspicuous 

 ornament of the tropical landscape — of 



" The studded archipelago. 

 O'er whose blue bosom rise the starry isles; " 



