8 BULLETIN 1457, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
varieties that would rank in quality of the fruit among the world's 
10 best dates have simply been allowed to produce their 100 or 200 
pounds of fruit a year for the owner without a single offshoot from 
them ever having been planted. The pride in a new variety, mani- 
fested by Americans in a desire to disseminate it far and. wide, 
seems to be limited among these people to pride of personal pos- 
session. 
There is probably no richer hunting ground for fine new dates 
to-day than the Nile Valley, if a method could be devised for start- 
ing offshoots on middle-aged or old trees. In this great region the 
utilization of the by-products of their date palms appears to have 
made little development beyond supplying local needs. Like any 
primitive people in a date-palm country, they look to the palm trees 
to supply a hundred domestic needs; but, beyond some very beau- 
tiful baskets manufactured about Aswan to be seen in Cairo ba- 
zaars, no export industry has stimulated the making of crates and 
cordage or baskets for hard service, such as are produced in great 
quantities in Lower Egypt and Fay um. 
SEEDLING DATES IN THE FAYUM OASIS 
Fayum is an oasis in a depression below the Nile about 75 miles 
southwest of Cairo. It is watered from the Bahr Yousef, a side 
channel, perhaps an ancient canal, diverging from the Nile far 
up the valley. It is connected with Cairo by a narrow-gauge rail- 
road intersecting the main line at Wasta. The economic conditions 
in Fayum are peculiar, and the varietal culture of dates has found 
little encouragement. Light railways afford quick connections with 
the Nile Valley, and a variety of produce finds a ready market in 
Cairo and other Delta towns. 
In Fayum there is a remarkable local specialization in agricul- 
tural products which has a very direct influence in maintaining 
seedling-date culture. One district is celebrated for its chickens, 
hatched in great numbers in a native type of incubator. In another 
figs are produced in large quantities under a special close-planting 
system developed in this district. Olives of several fine varieties 
are shipped to Cairo from another district, and early grapes from 
still another. 
The shipment of these highly diverse products to Cairo and other 
valley points calls for an immense number of special crates or con- 
tainers, which are manufactured with much skill and deftness from 
the ribs, or gerid, of the date leaves, a dozen or so of which are 
pruned from a tree each year. With 500,000 taxed date palms in 
Fayum, approximately G,000,000 leaves must be pruned off each 
year. The ribs of these are equivalent, perhaps, to 3,000,000 or 
4,000,000 feet of box boards, according to American board measure — 
a tidy little item for a small province with no forests. Further con- 
sideration of this subject will be found under " Utilization of date- 
palm by-products." 
The pinnae which are stripped from these ribs are bunched in neat 
bundles and passed to the basket makers to be woven into strong 
flat braid about iy 2 inches wide, to be sewed spirally into rough, 
serviceable baskets of about 3 pecks capacity, the general carryalls 
of the Egyptian fellaheen. 
