172 
plint's natueal histost. 
[Book XIII. 
however, is never eaten, but is always spit^^ out again, after 
the juice has been extracted. In Arabia, the palm fruit is 
said to have a sickly sweet taste, although Juba says that he 
prefers the date found among the Arabian Scehitse,^^ and to 
which they give the name of dablan,*' before those of any 
other country for flavour. In addition to the above parti- 
culars, it is asserted that in a forest of natural growth the 
female trees will become barren if they are deprived of the 
males, and that many female trees may be seen surrounding a 
single male with downcast heads and a foliage that seems to be 
bowing caressingly towards it ; while the male tree, on the 
other hand, with leaves all bristling and erect, by its exha- 
lations, and even the very sight of it and the dust^^ from 
off it, fecundates the others : if the male tree, too, should 
happen to be cut down, the female trees, thus reduced to a state 
of widowhood, will at once, become barren and unproductive. 
So well, indeed, is this sexual union between them understood, 
that it has been imagined even that fecundation may be en^ 
sured through the agency of man, by means of the blossoms 
and the down^^ gathered from off the male trees, and, indeed, 
sometimes by only sprinkling the dust from off them on the 
female trees. 
CHAP. 8. — HOW THE PALM-TEEE IS PLAin:ED. 
Palm-trees are also propagated by planting ; the trunk is 
first divided with certain fissures two cubits in length which 
communicate with the pith of the tree, and is then buried in 
the earth. A slip also torn away from the root will produce 
a sucker with vitality, and the same may be obtained from the 
more tender among the branches. In Assyria, the tree itself 
^9 This is said solely in relation to the date of Cyprus. 
20 Or " dwellers in tents similar to the modern Bedouins. 
21 Fee remarks, that in these words we find the first germs of the sexual 
system that has been established by the modern botanists. He thinks that 
it is clearly shown by this account, that Pliny was acquainted with the 
fecundation of plants by the agency of the pollen. 
22 In allusion to the pollen, possibly. See the last Note. 
23 *'Lanugine." It is possible that in the use of this word, also, he 
may allude to the pollen. Under the term "pulvis," <'dust," he probably 
alludes in exaggerated terms to the same theory. 
24 The same methods of propagating tlie palm are still followed in the 
East, and in the countries near the tropics. 
