170 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 



In a book written by Dr. Marshall Ward, the Endish botanist. ..u 

 ''Diseases of Plants," he says that the orreatest advance in the hist 

 decade in ao-ricultnre is the reeocrnition of the plant itself as a central 

 fi.iiure, and not the climate or soil or other factors of its environment, 

 and he f>oes on to depreciate the importance of af^ricultural chemistry, 

 and brings out the supreme importance of the plant itself. He com- 

 pares it to a factory. He says if we had a factory we mif^ht keep track 

 of ^\hat went in at the doors and what came out as the finished product, 

 but we would not be aware of what Avent on in the inside. 



I have taken too much time already, and I thank you for your 

 attention. 



MR. JAMES MILLS. This paper by Frank L. Palmer is a chissie 

 on this subject in this State. I commend it to every grower in the 

 State. He has stated the question so clearly, and with such intellio:ence. 

 that it can not be improved on and won't be improved on for many 

 years to come. Every grower everywhere ousht to read Frank L. 

 Palmer's paper, and it ought to be sent to them. It is a classic. Mr. 

 Chairman. I never heard such a paper. It commends itself to m(\ 

 and I commend it to everybody. 



PRESIDENT JEFFREY. We are now ready for the next paper. 

 ''Date Growing- in Southern California," by Prof. S. C. Mason. 



DATE GROWING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 



By SILAS C. MASON. Arboriclxturist, Plant Life History Investigations. 

 Department of Agricui.ti're. 



Date growing is doubtless one of the oldest of horticultural industries, 

 its culture by the Egyptians 2000 years B. C. being well authenticated 

 by tablets and hieroglyphics, and by the Assyrians at a period much 

 more remote. Assyrian wall tablets, long misunderstood, are now recog- 

 nized as showing the pollination of the date tree as an important 

 ceremonial. And. indeed, it may well have been so regarded, for as the 

 blighting of the corn tassels by the hot prairie winds of western Kansas 

 or Oklahoma means the failure of the corn crop, so any failure in the 

 critical process of artineially pollinating the date flowers with male 

 flowers from separate and perhaps distant trees may mean the loss 

 of their only food crop to thousands of people of the desert regions. 

 Few people who purchase dates as a confection realize that they are 

 one of the world's staple food crops, and the timber afl:'orded by the date 

 palm trunks the main dependence of large numbers of people in the 

 erection of their rude dwellings and tillages. 



Few trees in cultivation are so peculiar in their requirements or so 

 restricted as to the area of their profitable productiveness. Like most 

 woody plants of cultivation, the date varieties are not reproduced true 

 from seed. L^nlike our common exogenous fruits, as. for example, the 

 navel orange or the Bellflower apple, where a single twig may. afford 

 buds from which twenty new plants true to the variety may be propa- 

 gated, the date tree has, except in rare instances, no branches, but 



