Page:Illustrations of Indian Botany, Vol. 1.djvu/160

 The roots, again, are of a most extraordinary length, having numerous ramifications. In a tree, whose trunk was only ten or twelve feet high, with a trunk seventy-seven feet in circumference, Adanson has determined the main branch, or tap-root, to be one hundred and ten feet long. A figure of the whole tree may be seen in a beautiful vignette, at p. 141, of Lord Macartney's Embassy to China, drawn from a fine specimen in St. Jago, one of the Cape de Verd islands. The foliage there, indeed, is not so abundant as to conceal the vast proportion of the trunk, but it often happens, that the leaves are so numerous, and the branches spread out, drooping at the extremities, to such a degree, that the trunk is almost entirely concealed, and the whole forms a nearly hemispherical mass of verdure, from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and sixty or seventy feet high.

The wood is pale coloured, light, and soft, so that, in Abyssinia, the wild bees perforate it, for the purpose of lodging their honey in the holes, which honey is reckoned the best in the country. I know not that the wood itself is applied to any particular purpose, but the Negroes on the eastern coast of Africa employ the trunks in a certain state to a very extraordinary purpose. The tree is subject to a particular disease, owing to the attack of a species of Fungus, which vegetates in the woody part, and which, without changing its colour or appearance, destroys life, and renders the part so attacked, as soft as the pith of trees in general. Such trunks are then hollowed into chambers, and within them are suspended the dead bodies of those who are refused the honor of burial. There they become mummies, perfectly dry and well preserved, without any further preparation or embalmment, and are known by the name of guiriots.

This plant, like all of the neighbouring order of MALACEÆ, is emollient and mucilaginous in all its parts. The leaves dried and reduced to powder constitute lalo, a favourite article with the natives, and which they mix daily with their food, for the purpose of diminishing the excessive perspiration to which they are subject in those climates, and even the Europeans find it serviceable in cases of diarrhæa, fevers, and other maladies.

The fruit is, perhaps, the most useful part of the tree. Its pulp is slightly acid and agreeable, and frequently eaten ; while the juice is expressed from it, mixed with sugar, and constitutes a drink which is valued as a specific in putrid and pestilential fevers. Owing to these circumstances, the fruit forms an article of commerce.* The Mandingos convey it to the eastern and more southern districts of Africa, and through the medium of the Arabs, it reaches Morocco and even Egypt. If the fruit be decayed or injured, it is burned : the leys are boiled with rancid oil of palm, and the negroes use it instead of soap."

I shall now conclude these, I fear, rather too extended remarks on Adansonia, which the interest of the subject, has led me into, by extracting from the Flora Senegambiæ, a short account of its mode of growth. " It is surprising that in a country so hot and dry as the western coast of Africa, the Boabab can acquire such enormous dimensions. Individuals are often found in Senegal and Gambia having a circumference of even 60 or 80 feet, without however attaining a height in proportion to such thickness. These dimensions diminish in proportion as they recede from the sea coast. This singular vegetable seems to increase in diameter without our being able to attribute this effect solely to the influence of the leaves, since it is deprived of them during nearly two-thirds of the year. The herbaceous envelope, of a shining' green colour, by which the shapeless mass of its trunk is covered is very thin but full of life. From the slightest wound we can make in it, there bursts forth an abundant stream of liquid, a kind of nutritive sap, coming from the herbacious envelope which answers the same purpose as leaves, and which, so to speak, has been the principal focus of vegetable life. In a word the Baobab has a vegetation analogous to that of certain Cacti, which draw their nourishment not from the soil but from the air by their whole surface."

The Durian so much esteemed to the eastward is said by Rumphius, to be of a very heating quality; and liable to excite inflammatory derangements of the system. Whether these statements are in accordance with the results of modern experience is more than I can tell, but I rather suspect not, as all who have been able to reconcile themselves to the odour of the fruit


 * In Bowdich's account of Banjole, it is mentioned that this fruit possesses an agreeably acid flavour, and, being very abundant, it forms a principal article of food among the natives, who season many of their dishes with if, especially a kind of gruel made of corn, and called Rooy. Mr. Bowdich further observes, that this tree" loses its leaves before the periodical rains come on.