The thorough and prolonged soaking to which land is subject when under rice is in itself of considerable value to succeeding crops, and in the reclamation of heavy clay-lands in the Headquarters district my experience has been that as a first crop there is nothing to equal this cereal. In many cases, indeed, it was found to be the only crop which could be at all satisfactorily raised on new lands with only a moderate application of manure. A good tilth, moreover, is far more rapidly obtained than when other crops are grown, the difference in the second and third years between lands which have and have not had rice on them being most marked. I was much surprised to find that rice is not grown in the southern districts of the oasis, with the exception of a couple of small areas near Dakhakhin. Extended inquiries failed to elicit satisfactory reasons for this remarkable difference from the practice followed in the north, the universal reply to my questions being that they, the inhabitants, in not growing rice, were merely following the custom of their ancestors! I noticed, however, that durra was grown on a much larger scale than in the north of the oasis, and that the crops in some cases reached a fairly good standard. It seems probable, therefore, that in this part of the depression the soil is of higher average quality, so that the land, renovated by the annual deposition of a fresh layer of wind-borne sand and clay-dust in the manner already described, does not need a periodical cleansing by rice. This, at least, is the only satisfactory explanation which has occurred to me. The harvesting of the date-crop in September and October is the most important event of the year in Kharga Oasis. A large portion of the crop is exported to the Nile Valley, the Bedawin becoming traders for the time being, and transporting the produce across the desert by means of camels. There are over 60,000 adult date-palms, the chief palm-groves being at Kharga, Gennâh, and Bulaq in the north, and at Beris in the south. The selling-price in the oasis fluctuates to some extent, but averages twenty piastres a ‘weba’ of between 60 and 70 pounds, the weight of a weba varying considerably according to the moistness of the fruit and the astuteness of the man entrusted with the measuring. The price works out roughly at 4 pounds for threepence. In a book[14] entitled “The Great Sahara,” published nearly fifty years ago, Canon Tristram gives a very full account of the cultivation of the date-palm in North Africa. The date-palm (_Phœnix dactilifera_) is a tree specially characteristic of the Sahara, where the climate is marked by deficiency of rainfall and by considerable variations of temperature. Although it flourishes best in rainless regions, the date-palm will not fruit unless its roots are well watered; it must, indeed, as the native proverb puts it, ‘have its head in the fire and its roots in water.’