28 BULLETIN 1457, TJ. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
matures sufficiently for curing into a very fine product under mod- 
erate temperatures and with morning dew points and fogs during an 
average of 20 days in each month of September and October. From 
these facts it was predicted that the Saidy might be successfully 
grown in localities in the Imperial Valley of California, where 
costly experience had shown that occasional periods of cool nights 
with morning dew points in August and September caused sufficient 
rotting of partly matured Deglet Noor fruits to make the culture 
of that variety too much of a hazard commercially. 
Another locality from which the Deglet Noor has been still more 
effectually barred by cool nights and dew-point conditions is the 
Colorado Valley about Yuma, on both the California and the Ari- 
zona sides. With mean maximum temperatures about like those of 
Indio, Calif., the down draft of cool night air gives prevailing cool 
nights, with a mean daily range during the ripening season of 30° 
to 40° F. and frequent heavy dews., 
Two trees growing in the Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station 
garden below Yuma are offshoots from Saidy trees imported from 
Siwa Oasis by the Office of Foreign Plant Introduction in 1905, 
and planted in the Cooperative Date Garden at Tempe. By some 
accident these Yuma trees had been mislabeled " Kaiby," another 
Siwa Oasis variety of the same importation, and had been reported 
as maturing very superior fruit for several years. It was not until 
November, 1923, that A. J. Shamblin, in charge of the United States 
Experiment Date Garden at Indio and head of the scale-inspection 
work of the Federal Horticultural Board, identified these trees as the 
true Saidy and obtained samples of fine fruit matured naturally on 
the trees. 
This positive evidence of the ability of the Saidy date to mature 
high-quality fruit in the Colorado Valley under the adverse condi- 
tions of cool nights and dew-point humidity even more serious than 
those of Giza Province becomes of the highest importance to the 
future of the date industry in California and Arizona. It confirms 
the idea that the Saidy can be matured under dew-point conditions 
if day .temperatures sufficiently high are included. 
Considered in connection with the temperatures of Dakhla Oasis 
and Heluan, heretofore published (12; 13, pp. 28-29), and with 
various temperature records from points in California and Arizona, 
there is thus opened up a vast area as potential territory for the cul- 
ture of the Saidy date. 
In Table 2 are arranged the normal maximum and minimum tem- 
peratures for the seven growing months of the crop — April to 
October, inclusive — of six stations in the United States where the 
Saidy has been proved, in comparison with six others representa- 
tive of territory for its possible extension in California and 
Arizona. 
Dakhla Oasis, representing the Libian group of five oases, the 
home of the Saidy for more than a century, has the highest tem- 
peratures, a little above those of Mecca in the Coachella Valley 
(where the Saidy was fruited to perfection) and Calexico, repre- 
senting the Imperial Valley, now assured as the greatest prospective 
date area in America. Heluan, Egypt, representing the great Nile 
