Date palm

“ People say that the date-palm amongst vegetables resembles an animal in two respects: one is that, as, if an animal’s head be cut off, its life is taken, so it is with the date-palm, if its head is cut off, it dries off; the other is that, as the offspring of animals is not produced without the male, so too with the date-palm, it gives no good fruit unless a branch of the male-tree be brought into touch with the female-tree. ”

“ They often apply to different states of the fruit, or to different cultivated varieties, which again shows ancient cultivation in different countries. Webb and Berthelot have not discovered a name for the date-palm in the language of the Guanchos, and this is much to be regretted. The Greek name, phœnix, refers simply to Phœnicia and the Phœnicians, possessors of the date-palm.1508 The names dactylus and date are derivations of dachel in a Hebrew dialect.1509 No Sanskrit name is known, whence it may be inferred that the plantations of the date-palm in Western India are not very ancient. ”

“ All palms are not of the same variety, but the date palm is the one specially noted for its sweet fruit. When the orientals dry their dates and press them and ship them into our country, we then learn how nearly akin to sugar they are. ”

“ The date palm is a beautiful tree, growing to a height of from 60 to 80 ft., and its stem, which is strongly marked with old leaf-scars, terminates in a crown of graceful shining pinnate leaves. The flowers spring in branching spadices from the axils of the leaves, and as the trees are unisexual it is necessary in cultivation to fertilize the female flowers by artificial means. The fruit is oblong, fleshy and contains one very hard seed which is deeply furrowed on the inside. The fruit varies much in size, colour and quality under cultivation. ”

“ In these two regions the date palm is never met with growing naturally wild. Its presence is always due to its having been planted by man at some time or another, and therefore it is never seen far from human habitations. ”

“ The palms are all wonderful plants, from whatever point of view we may regard them. The services they render man are incalculable. The date palm gives him its nourishing fruit, the cocoa palm its milky nuts, the sago palm its farinaceous pith, and the Palmyra palm its sweet juice, which becomes wine by fermentation. Then, as for useful things that are neither eatable nor drinkable, the palm tribe furnishes vegetable oil, wax, and ivory, fibres that may be formed into cordage, leaves that may be used for thatching, and timber that may be applied to a hundred different purposes. ”

“ In the Sahara Desert the date palm grows often in extensive groves in the oases, and its wide distribution is probably due in large part to the dispersion of its seeds by the nomadic tribes, for whom its fruit serves as an important article of food. ”

“ The Calendar Round, as we have seen, determined the position of a given day within a period of only 52 years. Consequently, in order to prevent confusion of days of the same name in successive Calendar Rounds or, in other words, to secure absolute accuracy in dating events, it was necessary to use additional data in the description of any date.
In nearly all systems of chronology that presume to deal with really long periods the reckoning of years proceeds from fixed starting points. ”

“ If, then, it should appear that these races possessed and incorporated into their mythologies a knowledge of the Zodiac, and of the first degree of Aries as its initial point, their separation from the parent stock must have been subsequent to the formation of the scheme that dealt with a calendar based on an observation of the colure of the winter solstice at that point, and under this supposition the date of 6,000 B.C. becomes a foothold for the chronology of ancient history. ”

“ A few examples of Calendar-round dating are given in figure 83 and plate 25. In figure 83, A, is shown a part of the inscription on Altar M at Quirigua. [233] In A1 B1 appears a number consisting of 0 kins, 2 uinals, and 3 tuns, that is, 3.2.0, and following this in A2b B2, the date 4 Ahau 13 Yax, and in A3b B3 the date 6 Ahau 18 Zac. Compare the month glyphs in B2 and B3 with q and r, and s and t, respectively, of figure 19. This has every appearance of being a Secondary Series, one of the two dates being the starting point of the number 3.2.0, and the other its terminal date. ”

“ The Golden Numbers were introduced into the calendar about the year 530, but disposed as they would have been if they had been inserted at the time of the council of Nicaea. The cycle is supposed to commence with the year in which the new moon falls on the 1st of January, which took place the year preceding the commencement of our era. Hence, to find the Golden Number N, for any year x, we have N = x+1/19r , which gives the following rule: Add 1 to the date, divide the sum by 19; the quotient is the number of cycles elapsed, and the remainder is the Golden Number. ”

“ An improvement could, indeed, be made if, in the alternation of months of 29 and 30 days, two months of 30 days each be allowed to succeed each other at intervals of 33 months; also, if each fourth solar year were to contain 3651/4 days instead of 365, and if, finally, once in nineteen years, the so-called golden cycle, the reckoning of the lunar months began with the same date of the sun; but a uniform and perfect coincidence of these cycles of days, months, and years would also, in this manner, be unattainable. ”

“ There is something delightfully picturesque in the thought of man thus helped and guided in some of his most vital operations by the proceedings of the world of plants and animals, to whom that hard task-master Natural Selection has taught so much.
I have gone through Blomefield’s Calendar, recording for each species the number of days between the earliest and latest known dates of flowering. Thus the Mezereon did not flower earlier than 11th January or later than 2nd February; this means that the date of flowering may, as far as we know, vary to the extent of twenty-three days. ”

“ The next day he sent for dates, which cured him of the pain of his reins.
Since, I have learned that dates are an admirable medicine for the stone, from old Captain Tooke of K—. Take six or ten date-stones, dry them in an oven, pulverize and searce them; take as much as will lie on a six-pence, in a quarter of a pint of white wine fasting, and at four in the afternoon: walk or ride an hour after: in a week's time it will give ease, and in a month cure. ”

“ We will next proceed on the supposition that these indicate the months. In that case the dates given in the present example will be 9 Oc, 9 Ik, 9 Ix, 9 Cimi, and 9 Ezanab of the 15th month (Muan) . In this the feast, religious ceremony, or whatever the date refers to, occurs always in the same month, and so far agrees with what is left on record in reference to religious ceremonies and observances. As only the day and month are given, it is possible, as heretofore stated, to find four dates to each day. ”

“ Among the annoying inconveniences of our present calendar are the changing of the dates in each year at which the respective seasons, months and weeks begin, causing various holidays and other special days to be movable as regards the day of the week and often to be postponed to a new date, upon the day following, when they happen to occur on Sunday. ”

“ Anyone who saw the little dates while they were very young, if the man saw them at a distance, he would say they were full grown, so plump were the dates, so flourishing was the date-tree, and so vigorous the dates, and every bunch was well filled. ”

“ The days marked in the calendars are those of the saints’ deaths (vid. ante, p. 213) ; but the days on which their relics were translated to some particular church are also marked as festivals in the calendar of the church in question. When in different calendars different days are given to the same saint, the date in the calendar belonging to the church where he died [347] is usually to be regarded as the day of his death; the others are days on which his relics were translated. ”

“ A particular period of the Long Count, as Cycle 9, or Katun 14, etc.
2. The date which ends the particular period recorded, as 8 Ahau 13 Ceh, or 6 Ahau 13 Muan, the closing dates respectively of Cycle 9 and Katun 14 of Cycle 9; and
3. A glyph or element which means "ending" or "is ended," or which indicates at least that the period to which it is attached has come to its close.
The first two of these factors are absolutely essential to this method of dating, while the third, the so-called "ending sign," is usually, though not invariably, present. ”

“ Now we came away from the date-tree as long ago as one o'clock, and came here and slept, till now it is ten, are those dates to wait for us? Every day people sleep under the date-tree, and the bird comes and eats the dates, and goes away. ”

“ A CALENDAR AND WIND-DIAL are useful additions to some edifices. The Calendar indicates on special circles of a large dial—by means of three separate hands—the month of the year, the day of the month, and the day of the week. The peculiarity of this invention is that it needs no correction for the long and short months, nor even for the month of February, with its occasional 29 days; [ 178] as by means of a wheel cut for the successive months in a period of four years, and which takes that time for a single revolution, the calendar is rendered a perpetual one. ”

“ The first day or year of the cycle is Ki no E, Ne, "Wood—Elder Brother, Rat;" the second is Ki no To, Ushi, "Wood—Younger Brother, Bull;" and so on, until the sixtieth, Mizu no To, I, "Water—Younger Brother, Boar," is reached, and the cycle begins again.
These things, especially the lunar calendar, still largely influence the daily actions of the people. The peasantry scrupulously observe the traditional times and seasons in all the operations of agriculture. ”

“ Consequently, when 77 Calendar Rounds shall have passed we shall still have left 3 days (1,461,463 - 1,461,460 = 3) , which must be carried forward into the next Calendar Round. The 1,461,461st day will be 5 Imix 9 Cumhu, that is, the day following 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu (see fig. 23) ; the 1,461,462d day will be 6 Ik 10 Cumhu, and the 1,461,463d day, the last of the days in our Initial Series, 7 Akbal 11 Cumhu, the date recorded. ”

“ POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. ”

“ These documents are all dated in such and such a month of such and such a year of some king’s reign; the months are the same (at first under their earlier Accadian names [3] ) as those we [5] find in the almanacs translated by Epping and Strassmaier, and we meet in them, and in other historical inscriptions, with the intercalary months, the second Elul, and the second Adar. It would seem, then, that it was the same calendar, worked in the same way, that held its place through these two thousand years. ”

“ The days are distributed in the calendar into cycles of sixty, in the same manner as ours are distributed into weeks, or cycles of seven. Each day of the cycle has a particular name, and as it is a usual practice, in mentioning dates, to give the name of the day along with that of the moon and the year, this arrangement affords great facilities in verifying the epochs of Chinese chronology. The order of the days in the cycle is never interrupted by any intercalation that may be necessary for adjusting the months or years. ”

“ By this it may be seen how Cæsar reformed the Roman calendar. The Roman year was too short, by reason of which the calendar was thrown into confusion, being 90 days in advance of the true time, so that December, January and February took the place in the seasons of September, October and November, and September, October and November the place of June, July and August. To make the correction he must stop the old Roman clock (the calendar) while the Earth performs 90 diurnal revolutions to restore the concurrence of the solar and the civil year, making the year 46 B. C. to consist of 445 days. ”

“ THE CALENDAR. That there is a time for everything in gardening is almost a truism; the calendar is considered one of the most important parts of a technical book on this subject. It is advisable for an amateur gardener to have a note-book, in which he jots down what he has to do several weeks or months in advance; so often some fault easily remedied is left over from year to year, because perhaps it is only observed in the summer, and cannot be mended till winter. ”

“ Each third of the lunar calendar consists of 30-and 29-day months arranged in alternating sequence, with intercalary days added by the substitution of a 30-day for a 29-day month when the error arising from the nonconformity of the moon’s revolution reaches more than one day. In order that the lunar calendar might agree with the eclipse calendar more closely, these months were recorded in groups of five and six. ”

“ Initial-series dating; (2) Secondary-series dating; (3) Calendar-round dating; (4) Period-ending dating; (5) Katun-ending dating, or the u kahlay katunob. While apparently differing considerably from one another, in reality all are expressions of the same fundamental idea, the combination of the numbers 13 and 20 (that is, 260) with the solar year conceived as containing 365 days, and all were recorded by the same vigesimal system of numeration; that is:
1. All used precisely the same dates, the 18,980 dates of the Calendar Round;
2. All may be reduced to the same fundamental unit, the day ”