38 BULLETIN 1457, U. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICTJLTTJEE 
should be planted if possible before the natural season of growth be- 
gins. * * * 
In the Province of Aswan the offshoots are most generally allowed to grow 
into fruit-bearing trees around the mother tree, and plantations are extended 
by means of offshoots which are brought down the river from Saccot. These 
offshoots are taken from the parent tree in Saccot in the month of February, 
when they are at once packed tightly together in bundles surrounded by sack- 
ing, matting, and straw, 18 to 25 suckers being packed in each bundle. When 
packed in this way they are placed near the edge of the river and kept wet 
until the month of May or June, after which they are taken by camel to 
Haifa for shipment to Aswan. They are watered during the voyage down rhe 
river, so that when they arrive at Aswan they are mostly well furnished with 
roots among the decomposing packing material. 
A lot of offshoots of three choice Sukkot varieties, which were 
obtained for the writer in the spring of 1922 through the kindness 
of the governor of Haifa Province, were transported 150 miles by 
camel to Wadi Haifa, thence by boat and rail to Giza, where they 
arrived at the Government gardens in perfect condition. They 
stood the long shipment to the United States Experiment Date Gar- 
den at Indio, Calif., remarkably well. These offshoots were peculiar 
in that though small they were very hard and heavy, some of them 
sinking in water. They were evidently old and cut from what 
the natives call " thirsty " trees. 23 They were wrapped in convenient 
bundles covered with short wheat straw and chaff containing con- 
siderable grain, with layers of leef and sacking outside. Wetting 
the bundle had sprouted the grain, forming a moist layer which 
kept the offshoots in excellent condition. Of course, care would 
have to be taken that this sprouting condition did not run into fer- 
mentation and decay. 
It is not an unusual thing to find a seedling date palm bearing 
the finest dof fruit, but with no offshoots on it and past the age 
when offshoots are generally produced. To induce offshoot pro- 
duction in such a tree would be a very valuable achievement. Tra- 
ditions are not wanting, in both Egypt and Algeria, of native gar- 
deners so skillful that they can accomplish this much-desired result, 
but the actual accomplishment has never been satisfactorily demon- 
strated. 
The writer did indeed get near enough to one of these wizards 
to be informed of the location of his town and was solemnly as- 
sured by a prominent Nile Valley attorney that in his town was 
a gardener to whom people resorted in just such an emergency. " He 
builds a tin box around the tree just below the leaves," the writer 
was assured, " fills it with earth, and waters it every day for a year. 
By that time he has offshoots growing." Unfortunately, my pas- 
sage was already booked for America, and the English scientist 
who undertook to locate this gardener was retired from his post, so 
that he was unable to complete the investigation. 
So this still remains one of the date-cultural problems yet to be 
worked out. Rather an expensive way of obtaining offshoots, per- 
haps, if computed by American wage standards; but there is at 
least one variety, represented by a single tree growing in sight of 
Indio, Calif., from which a crop of offshoots would be worth far 
more than a year's labor. 
28 They are a most valuable type for long-distance shipment and may have had an 
origin similar io those shown in Plate 5. B. 
