as a portable refection by jurymen and others who may be
kept from their customary food Dates will prevent exhaustion, and
will serve to keep active the energies of mind and body. The fruit
should be selected when large and soft, being moist, and of a
reddish yellow colour outside, and not much wrinkled, whilst
having within a white membrane between the flesh and the stone.

Beads for rosaries are made in Barbary from Date stones turned in
a lathe; or when soaked in water for a couple of days the stones
may be given to cattle as a nutritious food, being first ground in a
mill. The fodder being astringent will serve by its tannin, which is
abundant, to cure or prevent looseness.

In a clever parody on Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee," an undergraduate
is detected in having primed himself before examination thus:--

"Inscribed on his cuffs were the Furies, and Fates,
With a delicate map of the Dorian States:
Whilst they found in his palms, which were hollow,
What are common in Palms--namely, Dates."

[155] Again, a conserve is prepared by the Egyptians from unripe
Dates whole with sugar. The soft stones are edible: and this jam,
though tasteless, is very nourishing. The Arabs say that Adam
when driven out of Paradise took with him three things--the Date,
chief of all fruits, Myrtle, and an ear of Wheat.

Another Palm--the _Sagus_, or, _Cycus revolute_,--which grows
naturally in Japan and the East Indian Islands, being also
cultivated in English hot-houses, yields by its gummy pith our
highly nutritious sago. This when cooked is one of the best and
most sustaining foods for children and infirm old persons. The
Indians reserve their finest sago for the aged and afflicted. A
fecula is washed from the abundant pith, which is chemically a
starch, very demulcent, and more digestible than that of rice. It
never ferments in the stomach, and is very suitable for hectic
persons. By the Arabs the pith of the Date-bearing Palm is eaten in
like manner. The simple wholesome virtues of this domestic
substance have been told of from childhood in the well-known
nursery rhyme, which has been playfully rendered into Latin and
French:--

"There was an old man of Iago
Whom they kept upon nothing but sago;
Oh! how he did jump when the doctor said plump:
'To a roast leg of mutton you may go.'"

"Jamdudum senior quidam de rure Tobagus
Invito mad das carpserat ore dapes;
Sed medicus tandem non