Euphrates; it was supposed to be here that they were first cultivated in Western Asia, and that they spread from hence to Syria, Egypt, and the whole of Europe.** “The soil there is so favourable to the growth of cereals, that it yields usually two hundredfold, and in places of exceptional fertility three hundredfold.  The leaves of the wheat and barley have a width of four digits.  As for the millet and sesame, which in altitude are as great as trees, I will not state their height, although I know it from experience, being convinced that those who have not lived in Babylonia would regard my statement with incredulity.”  Herodotus in his enthusiasm exaggerated the matter, or perhaps, as a general rule, he selected as examples the exceptional instances which had been mentioned to him:  at present wheat and barley give a yield to the husbandman of some thirty or forty fold.

* Olivier, who was a physician and naturalist, and had visited Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, thought that Babylonia was somewhat less fertile than Egypt.  Loftus, who was neither, and had not visited Egypt, declares, on the contrary, that the banks of the Euphrates are no less productive than those of the Nile.

** Native traditions collected by Berossus confirm this, and the testimony of Olivier is usually cited as falling in with that of the Chaldaean writer.  Olivier is considered, indeed, to have discovered wild cereals in Mesopotamia.  Pie only says, however, that on the banks of the Euphrates above Anah he had met with “wheat, barley, and spelt in a kind of ravine;” from the context it clearly follows that these were plants which had reverted to a wild state—­instances of which have been observed several times in Mesopotamia.  A. de Oandolle admitted the Mesopotamian origin of the various species of wheat and barley.

[Illustration:  030.jpg THE GATHERING OF THE SPATHES OF THE MALE PALM TREE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cylinder in the Museum at the
     Hague.  The original measures almost an inch in height.

“The date palm meets all the other needs of the population; they make from it a kind of bread, wine, vinegar, honey, cakes, and numerous kinds of stuffs; the smiths use the stones of its fruit for charcoal; these same stones, broken and macerated, are given as a fattening food to cattle and sheep.”  Such a useful tree was tended with a loving care, the vicissitudes in its growth were observed, and its reproduction was facilitated by the process of shaking the flowers of the male palm over those of the female:  the gods themselves had taught this artifice to men, and they were frequently represented with a bunch of flowers in their right hand, in the attitude assumed by a peasant in fertilizing a palm tree.  Fruit trees were everywhere mingled with ornamental trees—­the fig, apple, almond, walnut, apricot, pistachio, vine, with the plane tree, cypress, tamarisk, and acacia; in the prosperous period of the country the plain of the Euphrates was a great orchard which extended uninterruptedly from the plateau of Mesopotamia to the shores of the Persian Gulf.