SAIDY DATE OF EGYPT. 25 
culture of this very promising date on a commercial scale in Cali- 
fornia within a reasonable time. 
THE SAIDY DATE AS A COMMERCIAL VARIETY. 
The superior quality of the Saidy dates was recog-nized by the 
management of an English concern. The Corporation of Western 
Egypt, which had established trading stores in Kharga and Dakhla 
some years prior to 1913. They had packed the fruit in paper cartons 
under the brand " Dakla Dates " (shown in PL XIY, Department 
Bulletin 271) (~.?> and had shipped the bulk of the crop of one year 
to England. The enterprise had failed to yield a profit, along with 
all the other activities of this corporation, in this instance, the man- 
agers claimed, owing to the extra cost of moving such packages by 
the long camel transportation involved. 
In the native methods of packing as seen by the writer at Rashida, 
the dates are gathered before becoming fully ripe and spread in the 
sun in drying yards, often in the open court of their houses, for 
several days, being occasionally turned. They were then packed in 
bags braided from the date-leaf pinna 3 , holding about 160 rotls, or 
pounds, each. (PI. V. Fig. 1.) After the dates were firmly pressed 
into these bags, making a compact air-excluding mass, sealed by the 
slightly exuding sirup of the fruit, a circular piece of matting of the 
same material as the bags was >ewed on as a lid. and the dates were 
ready for camel transportation, two balancing bags weighing 320 
rotls constituting a load for a desert camel. As the oasis people own 
very few camels, this traffic is chiefly in the hands of the Bedouins, 
who are shrewd trader.-, largely obtaining the dates in exchange for 
goods brought from the valley, thus loading their camels in both 
directions and making a handsome profit on each transaction. 
Egypt, with more than 11,000,000 people to whom dates are a staple 
article of food and only about 7,000,000 date palms, exports but few 
dates, only a few hundred tons of the Amri variety, a large coarse 
date produced in the eastern delta region, being sent to southern 
Europe, and these are more than counterbalanced by the imports of 
dates from Algeria and the Persian Gulf and by the dates brought 
down the Xile from the Sudan. While a few trees of the Saidy 
variety, from both the oases and the Xile Valley, have borne abun- 
dantly at the Tempe. Ariz., garden, but little fruit has matured and 
none has reached perfection (PL IV. Fig. 2). So it was only when 
trees came into bearing at the Mecca garden and their fruits were 
cured and packed by the same processes that had been developed for 
the handling of the Deglet Xoor that the splendid market qualities of 
this new commercial variety were brought to light. 
The characteristics of this variety which promise for it such high 
place among the few great market dates of the world are : 
(1) Its quality and flavor. It is a superior date which at once 
commends itself to lovers of fine fruits. Size and appearance count 
for little if on trial the quality is found wanting. It" is rich in 
sugar, so rich as to be even cloying to some persons, when freshly 
packed, though greatly enjoyed by others; but this cloying quality 
disappears after the fruit has been packed a month or irrore. /By 
that time the flesh begins to take on a slightly granular character. 
