THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 177 



own stems in fancy packages and command truly fancy prices. The 

 third type, or dry dates, are so far known in this country only to those 

 familiar with the experiment station results. Sometimes classed as 

 bread dates, some varieties of them might very properly be called cooky 

 dates or wafer dates. So hard as to avoid all stickiness, somewhat 

 sugary, yet with a distinctly wheaty taste and an agreeable date flavor 

 w^hich can not be copied, they possess those agreeable qualities which 

 call for "more" to that degree to which the great bakery and biscuit 

 companies are always striving to bring their products, yet the eating 

 of more does not bring the cloyed sensation which follows eating more 

 than a few of the rich soft dates. Of this class of dates are the 

 Kenteeshy, Kerza. and an unnamed variety which have given us excel- 

 lent fruit, and a number of similar or reputedly better varieties yet to 

 be fruited. These are medium early in maturing and less affected by 

 unseasonable rains than the soft varieties. At the same time they are 

 heavy bearers and easily kept. 



I have offered them to but few people who failed to like them with 

 the first trial, and it seems to be a liking which grows. With the 

 American habit of buying something to nibble upon, whether peanuts, 

 popcorn or the latest new package article compounded from both. I 

 predict for this type of dry sweet dates an immense and lasting popu- 

 larity as soon as our public comes to know them. 



An item of great importance in favor of American grown and packed 

 dates over the Arabian is brought out by Mr. David G. Fairchild, 

 in Bureau of Plant Industry Bulletin No. 54, Persian Gulf dates, in 

 which he says, page 29, "No old inhabitant thinks of eating a date 

 without first thoroughly washing it in a glass of water unless the cook 

 has prepared it beforehand, and the sale of dates in America might 

 fall off decidedly were it generally known how intimately the unwashed 

 hands, bodies and teeth of the notably filthy Arabs often come in con- 

 tact with the dates which are sold by every confectioner." 



SEEDLING DATE VARIETIES. 



In the production of seedling date varieties lies a most fascinating 

 field for the desert experimenter. Nearly- every early settlement in the 

 Southwest had a few old seedling date trees, either from seeds of 

 imported fruits from the markets or from the old stock introduced at 

 an early day by the missions. Some of these are of very excellent 

 quality. In not a few instances trees bearing choice fruit have passed 

 the offshoot producing stage, and no way is known by which the variety 

 may be propagated. At Phoenix. Arizona, owing to the intelligence and 

 skill of Mr. and Mrs. Lount, two varieties, perhaps the choicest that 

 have originated in Arizona, have been preserved and a number of off- 

 shoots set out. 



A new seedling, recently discovered at a ranch in the Gila Valley 

 near Gila Bend, is of such superior flavor and earliness as to make it 

 a variety of great promise for propagation for the shorter season dis- 

 tricts of the date growing area. One decidedly good early variety has 

 developed among a seedling row of about twenty trees on a ranch near 

 Indio. 



From the Mecca garden the department gave out to the settlers in 



12 — FGC 



