54 BULLETIN 1457, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
A slight granulation of the sugar has taken place, and the somewhat 
cloving richness of the freshly ripened fruit has given place to some- 
thing near a maple-sugar flavor through the development of certain 
ethers. 
The preparation of the Saidy date of the Libian Oases for ihe 
valley markets is by far the older industry, and the following extract 
from' Wilkinson (22. vol. 2, p. 357), information cited as gathered 
in 1824, throws interesting light on the oasis conditions of that day : 
The modern name of the Little Oasis, the Oasis Parva of the Romans, is 
Wah el Behnesa 24 — a translation of the old Coptic Ouahe Pemge. * * * 
In this Wah are grown a variety of fruit trees, much liquorice, rice, barley, 
wheat, doora. clover, wild cotton (probably the remains of former planta- 
tions), and most of the usual productions of the Nile; but the principal source 
of wealth here, as in the other oases, is the date tree, which yields a very 
superior quality of fruit. 
The dates are of four kinds : The Soltanee, the Sai'dee, which are the best, 
the Kaka, and the Ertob (rottub) ; but those of the Siwah are even better 
The proportion of fruit trees is also much greater than on the Nile. 
A conserve of dates, called agweh, is made by pounding them in a mass and 
then mixing whole dates with it. The Sai'dee are preferred for this purpose 
and are preserved in earthern jars and kept by the natives for their own use : 
but some, which they put into baskets, are sent to the Nile, where they are 
highly and justly esteemed. They are very sweet and rich, unlike any pro- 
duced in Egypt, and are sold at $5 or .$6 the kantar. 
The sample obtained by Fairchild in Fayum under the name of 
"Wahi," described by Swingle {20). was from a bulk pack for 
camel transportation from Baharia Oasis (pi. 3, A) and was 
described in part as follows : 
The flesh is yellowish, granular midway between the skin and the seed, and 
of a most delicious flavor; This dare had been gathered and kept, with no 
precaution against drying out. for at least eight months when it was received 
at "Washington, but was still in very good condition, except for the attacks of 
weevils. It seems to be a better keeper and to have a higher flavor than the 
Deglet Noor. 
A sample of a special pack, put up for his own table by a well- 
to-do landowner above Giza. showed the u Sewi " at its best and 
was an example of what painstaking work might do to give this 
home-grown fruit a chance to compete with the " Dates Muscades," 
the second-quality Deglet Noor dates, which are brought into Cairo 
every fall from Algeria. 
It is a very significant fact, in a commercial way, that even second- 
grade Deglet Noor dates, put up in fancy 1-pound packages or in 
3-pound and 5-pound boxes, solid pack, will sell in limited quan- 
tities for three or four times as much in their own home town as 
the " Sewi " in a dirty and insanitary bulk pack. 
In the fall of 1921 parties in Kharga Oasis undertook to make 
a trial shipment to London of the excellent Saidy dates of that 
oasis, famous in Egypt for more than a century. About 500 pounds 
were packed in neat 1-pound cartons, and an attempt was made at 
fumigation against the ■ ■ Kharga moth,'' which deposits its eggs 
under the calyx of the unripe date. 
When the consignment reached Cairo, the dates were delicious 
and would have outsold anything on the market, but the fumiga- 
tion had been unskillfully done, and a few weeks saw the boxes 
- 4 Now generally called Baharia. 
