Among the natural products of the region two stand out as pre-eminently important-the wheat-plant and the date-palm. [Plate iv., Fig. 2.] According to the native tradition, wheat was indigenous in Chaldaea; and the first comers thus found themselves provided by the bountiful hand of Nature with the chief necessary of life.  The luxuriance of the plant was excessive.  Its leaves were as broad as the palm of a man’s hand, and its tendency to grow leaves was so great that (as we have seen) the Babylonians used to mow it twice and then pasture their cattle on it for awhile, to keep down the blade and induce the plant to run to ear.  The ultimate return was enormous; on the most moderate computation it amounted to fifty-fold at the least, and often to a hundred-fold.  The modern oriental is content, even in the case of a rich soil, with a tenfold return.

The date-palm was at once one of the most valuable and one of the most ornamental products of the country.  “Of all vegetable forms,” says the greatest of modern naturalists, “the palm is that to which the prize of beauty has been assigned by the concurrent voice of nations in all ages.”  And though the date-palm is in form perhaps less graceful and lovely than some of its sister species, it possesses in the dates themselves a beauty which they lack.  These charming yellow clusters, semi-transparent, which the Greeks likened to amber, and moderns compare to gold, contrast, both in shade and tint, with the green feathery branches beneath whose shade they hang, and give a richness to the landscape they adorn which adds greatly to its attractions.  And the utility of the palm has been at all times proverbial.  A Persian poem celebrated its three hundred and sixty uses.  The Greeks, with more moderation, spoke of it as furnishing the Babylonians with bread, wine, vinegar, honey, groats, string and ropes of all kinds, firing, and a mash for fattening cattle.  The fruit was excellent, and has formed at all times an important article of nourishment in the country.  It was eaten both fresh and dried, forming in the latter case a delicious sweetmeat.  The wine, “sweet but headachy,” was probably not the spirit which it is at present customary to distil from the dates, but the slightly intoxicating drink called lagby in North Africa, which may be drawn from the tree itself by decapitating it, and suffering the juice to flow.  The vinegar was perhaps the same fluid corrupted, or it may have been obtained from the dates.  The honey was palm-sugar, likewise procurable from the sap.  How the groats were obtained we do not know; but it appears that the pith of the palm was eaten formerly in Babylonia, and was thought to have a very agreeable flavor.  Ropes were made from the fibres of the bark; and the wood was employed for building and furniture.  It was soft, light and easily worked; but tough, strong and fibrous.