1885.] HISTORICAL NOTICE OF CELEBRATED TREES. 87 



washed away tlie earth, was traced to upwards of 110 feet without 

 reaching the extremity. To these peculiarities, rather than to the 

 nature of the wood, which is light and soft, the great age to which 

 the tree attains may probably be traced. Its form opposes an 

 effectual resistance to the tempests which would overthrow ordinary 

 trees. The history of these Baobabs, possibly of the very trees 

 which Adanson's account has rendered famous, reaches back to the 

 discovery of the coast of Senegal and of the Cape de Verde Islands, 

 by Cadamosto, in 1455, who in his narrative mentions the singular 

 disproportion between the height and girth of these trees. But they 

 were first fully described by the French naturalist Adanson, who 

 examined them scarcely a century ago. The largest trunks measured 

 by Adanson were 85 feet in circumference, or 27 feet in diameter. 

 Golberry is said to have measured one that was more than 100 feet 

 in girth, and M. Perrottet in 1824 met with many Baobabs in 

 Senegambia varying from 60 to 90 feet in circumference, yet still 

 in a green old age, and showing no signs of decay ; but, on the 

 contrary, if wounded in the smallest degree, they exuded a copious 

 sap. There can therefore be no doubt respecting the prodigious size 

 which these trees attain, and there is great reason to suppose that 

 Humboldt was right in supposing them to be the oldest in existence. 

 As to their actual age, the narrative usually given is the following. 

 Adanson observed in 1749, at the Madelaine Islands, near Cape de 

 Verde, some Baobab trees of 3 feet in diameter, upon the trunks of 

 which he found inscriptions that had been made three hmidred 

 years before by two English travellers ; that by cutting through 300 

 annual layers, he discovered the vestiges of these inscriptions upon 

 the wood, thus proving that they were actually made at the date 

 assigned ; that by measuring the thickness of these layers he was 

 enabled to judge of the rate of increase during the last three 

 centuries ; that having thus obtained the rate of increase in old age, 

 and having by actual inspection of young trunks, learned the rate of 

 growth during the first hundred years, he deduced from these 

 combined data the almost inevitable conclusion that the trees in 

 question were five or six thousand years old. In most accounts 

 of the tree, the following table is also given as if drawn up by 

 Adanson : — 



At 1 year old it was 1 to l^- inch diam., and 5 feet high. 



J) 1 5 }> 



22 „ 

 29 



58 „ 



3J to,. 



