BENGAZI.

341 greater*. Both these methods are described by Pliny, (Hist. Iat.

lib. xiii.) and the whole account which is there given of the palmtree and its several varieties is extremely accurate and interesting.

The attachment of this tree to a sandy and nitrous soil, and its partiality at the same time for water ; its inability to thrive in any other » than a dry and hot climate, its peculiar foliage and bark, and the decided distinction of sex which is observable in it, are all mentioned in detail by the Koman naturalist.

The remarks of Arab writers on the distinction of sex in the palmtree are nearly the same with those of Pliny ; and a most extraordinary confirmation of it will be found in a Persian anecdote quoted by Silvestre de Sacy ; from which it will clearly appear that an unrequited and secret attachment to a neighbouring date-tree had nearly caused the death of a too-susceptible female palm !

* The following is the process mentioned by Shaw. — “ In the months of March or April, when the sheaths that respectively enclose the young clusters of the male flowers and the female fruit begin to open (at which time the latter are formed and the first are mealy), they take a sprig or two of the male cluster, and insert it into the sheath of the female ; or else they take a whole cluster of the male tree, and sprinkle the meal, or farina of it over several clusters of the female.” (Travels in Barbary, vol. i., p. 259-60).

The same author remarks that the palm-tree arrives at its greatest vigour about thirty years after transplantation, and continues so seventy years afterwards ; bearing yearly fifteen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them weighing fifteen or twenty pounds.

“ Si parmi les palmiers (says the author of a treatise on agriculture quoted by Kazwini, in the words of Silvestre de Sacy), “ Si parmi les palmiers on rapproche les individus males des individus femelles, ces derniers portent des fruits en plus grande abundance, “ Shaw has observed that “the method of raising the Phmnix (foml) or palm, and, what may be further observed, that when the old trunk dies, there is never wanting one or other of those offsprings to succeed it, may have given occasion to the fable of the bird of that name dying and another arising from it."

(So Pliny, lib. xiii. c. 4.) Mirumqtie de ea accepimus cum phoenice ave quse putatur ex hujus palmse argumento nomen acccpisse, emori ac renasci ex seipsa.