PHOENIX, the great palm or date-tree. There is only one species, viz. the dactylifera, or common date-tree, a na tive of Africa and the eastern countries, where it grows to fifty, sixty, and a hundred feet in height. The trunk is round, upright, and studded with protuberances, which are the vestiges of the decayed leaves. From the top issues forth a cluster of leaves or branches eight or nine feet long, extending all around like an umbrella, and bending a little towards the earth. The lower part produces a number of stalks like those of the middle, but these seldom shoot so high as four or five feet. The stalks, according to Adanson, diffuse the tree very considerably, so that, wherever it grows naturally in forests, it is extremely difficult to open a passage through its prickly leaves. The date-tree was introduced into Jamaica soon after the conquest of that island by the Spaniards. There are, however, but few of them in the island at the present time. The fruit is somewhat in the shape of an acorn. It is composed of a thin, light, and glossy membrane, somewhat pellucid and yellowish, which contains a fine, soft, and pulpy fruit, that is firm, sweet, and somewhat vinous to the taste, esculent, and wholesome; and within this is enclosed a solid, tough, and hard kernel, of a pale gray colour upon the outside, and finely marbled within like the nutmeg. For medicinal use dates areto be chosen large, full, fresh, yellow on the surface, soft and tender, not too much wrinkled; such as have a vinous taste, and do not rattle when shaken. They are produced in many parts of Europe, but never ripen perfectly there. The best are brought from Tunis; they are also very fine and good in Egypt, and in many parts of the East. Those of Spain and France look well; but they are never perfectly ripe, and very subject to decay. They are preserved three different ways; some pressed and dry; others pressed more moderately, and again moistened with their own juice; and others not pressed at all, but moistened with the juice of other dates, as they are packed up, which is done in baskets or skins. Those preserved in this last way are much the best. Dates have always been esteemed moderately strengthening and astringent.

Dates afford wholesome nourishment, and have a very agreeable taste when they are fresh; the Arabs, however, eat them without seasoning. They dry and harden them in the sun to reduce them to a kind of meal, which they lay up in store to supply themselves with food during the long journeys which they often undertake across their deserts. This simple food is sufficient to nourish them for a long time. The inhabitants of the Sahara also procure from their dates a kind of honey, which is exceedingly sweet. For this purpose they choose those which have the softest pulp; and having put them into a large jar with a hole in the bottom, they squeeze them by placing over them a weight of eight or ten pounds. The most fluid part of the substance, which drops through the hole, is what they call the honey of the date. Even the stones, though very hard, are not thrown away, but given to their camels and sheep as food, after they have been bruised or laid to soften in water.

Phoenix, in Antiquity, a famous bird, which is generally regarded by the moderns as fabulous. The ancients speak of this bird as single, or the only one of its kind. They describe it as of the size of an eagle, having its head finely crested with a beautiful plumage, its neck covered with feathers of a gold colour, and the rest of its body, except the tail, purple, and the eyes sparkling like stars. They hold that it lives five or six hundred years in the wilderness; that when thus advanced in age, it builds itself a pile of sweet wood and aromatic gums, which it fires with the wafting of its wings, and thus bums itself; and that from its ashes arises a worm, which in time grows up to be a phoenix. Hence the Phoenicians gave the name phoenix to the palm-tree, because, when burned down to the root, it rises again fairer than ever.