Golden hamster stock of hamsters was exported from Syria to the United States in 1971, but apparently none of today's North American pets is descended from these (at least in the female line), because recent mitochondrial DNA studies have established that all domestic golden hamsters are descended from one female – probably the one captured in 1930 in Syria. Since the species was named, the genus "Cricetus" has been subdivided and this species (together with several others) was separated into the genus "Mesocricetus", leading to the currently accepted scientific name for the golden hamster of "Mesocricetus auratus". Following Professor Aharoni's collection in
The Gourd and the Palm-tree work for children. The same poem was later reprinted in Frances Jenkins Olcott's anthology of "Story-Telling Poems" (New York, 1913) with the same claim. Although there is ultimately some justice in this, as we have seen, the poem itself very obviously derives from Meissner's German fable and its original (and unacknowledged) Scottish author, Charles Mackay, nowhere credits it with an Eastern origin in the collection in which it first appeared. The Gourd and the Palm-tree The Gourd and the Palm-tree is a rare fable of West Asian origin that was first recorded in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the