406 K W. Berry— Fruits of a Date Palm. 



fruits and drawings of the date and Assyrian inscriptions show 

 that it grew in abundance in the region lying between the 

 Euphrates and the Nile. Herodotus mentions the uses of the 

 wood in Babylon and somewhat later Strabo indicates its 

 abundance in Arabia. There is no historic evidence of the 

 existence of the date palm west of Egypt in the oases of the 

 Sahara, but Pliny mentions its occurrence in the Canaries. If 

 these facts were wanting, a philological study of the names 

 applied to the date would indicate that the most ancient 

 peoples of these regions with a written language, as for 

 example the Egyptians, found the date indigenous in their 

 country. The Greek name Phoenix refers simply to the fact 

 that the Phoenicians were possessors of the tree and traded in 

 its fruits, while the specific name of the species dactylifera 

 and the vernacular name date are both, according to Bitter, 

 derivations of the Hebrew dachel. 



The commercial date does not perfect its fruit except in 

 incredibly hot climates where clouds are not common and 

 where all forms of atmospheric humidity are very low, in fact 

 no amount of heat or degree of dryness of the air is injurious 

 provided the roots have access to a sufficient supply of mois- 

 ture. There is an old Arab proverb which says of the date, 

 " its feet shall be in a stream of water and its head in the fur- 

 nace of heaven." While the great caravan routes that traverse 

 the deserts of northern Africa and southwestern Asia are 

 intimately associated with date culture and while the finest 

 varieties grow in the oases and sunken gardens of the Sahara, 

 a consideration of the ecology of the date and of the other 

 existing species of Phoenix, at least two of which are coastal 

 types, indicates that the geologic ancestors were not necessarily 

 desert types but inhabitants of coasts and stream banks where 

 the water-table approached near enough to the surface to be- 

 come available for their root system. When corroborated by the 

 associated forms of vegetation they may indicate hot climates 

 with a scanty rainfall as they probably do in east Texas, and it 

 seems certain that temperatures could not have gone below 

 18° C. without being fatal. 



Phoenicites occidentalis comes from a cut on the Interna- 

 tional and Great Northern Bailroad in southern Trinity 

 county, where a spur to the Government Lock leaves the main 

 line. The outcrop is referred to the Catahoula formation, 

 which in this region is of late Eocene or early Oligocene age. 

 The type is shown in the accompanying text figures (fig. 1), 

 while the sketch map (fig. 2) shows in a generalized way the 

 area of distribution of the existing species of Phoenix and the 

 fossil occurrences of Phoenicites. 



Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 



