Chap. 9.] 
PALM-TllEES. 
173 
is sometimes laid level, and then covered over in a moist soil ; 
upon which it will throw out roots all over, but it will grow 
only to be a number of shrubs, and never a tree : hence it is 
that they plant nurseries, and transplant the young trees when 
a year old, and again when two years old, as they thrive all 
the better for being transplanted ; this is done in the spring 
season in other countries, but in Assyria about the rising of the 
Dog-star. In those parts they do not touch the young trees 
with the knife, but merely tie up the foliage that they may 
shoot upwards, and so attain considerable height. When 
they are strong they prune them, in order to increase their 
thickness, but in so doing leave the branches for about half a 
foot ; indeed, if they were cut off at any other place, the ope- 
ration would kill the parent tree. We have already men- 
tioned that they thrive particularly well in a saltish soil ; 
hence, when the soil is not of that nature, it is the custom to 
scatter salt, not exactly about the roots, but at a little distance 
off. There are palm-trees in Syria and in Egypt which divide 
into two trunks, and some in Crete into three and as many as 
five even.^^ Some of these trees bear immediately at the end of 
three years, and in Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt, when they are 
four years old ; others again at the end of five years : at which 
period the tree is about the height of a man. So long as the 
tree is quite young the fruit has no seed within, from which 
circumstance it has received the nickname of the eunuch."-^ 
CHAP. 9. — THE DIFEEHENT VARIETIES OF PALM-TEEES, AIS^D THEIR 
CHAEACTEEISTICS. 
There are numerous varieties of the palm-tree. In Assyiia, 
and throughout the whole of Persis, the barren kinds are made 
use of for carpenters* work, and the various appliances of 
luxury. There are whole forests also of palm-trees adapted 
for cutting, and which, after they are cut, shoot again from 
25 In c. 7 of the present Book. See also B. xvii. c. 3. 
Fee mentions one near Elvas in Spain, which shot up into seven distinct 
trees, as it were, from a single trunk. The Douma Thebaica, he says, of 
Syria and Egypt, a peculiar kind of palm, is also bifurcated. The fruit 
of it, he thinks, are very probably the Phsenico-balanus of B. xii. c. 47. 
2'' Spado.'* Eepresented by the Greek evvovxog and evopxog, 
28 u Ceeduae." Though this is the fact as to some palm-trees, the greater 
part perish after being cut ; the vital bud occupying the summit, and the 
trunk not being susceptible of any increase. 
