70 ILLUSTRATIONS OF INDIAN BOTANY. 
The roots, again, are of a most extraordinary length, having numerous ramifications. Ina 
tree, whose trunk was only ten or twelve feet high, with a trunk seventy-seven feet in circum- 
ference, Adanson has determined the main branch, or tap-root, to be one hundred and ten feet 
ng. A figure of the whole tree may Le seen in a beautiful vignette, at p. 141, of Lord Macart- 
ney’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 pur- 
pose. 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 Matvace®, is emollient and mucilaginous 
ern coast of Africa, the Boabab can acquire such enormous dimensions, Individuals are often 
our being able to attribute this effect solely to the influence of the leaves 
le tes art a ee of the year. The herbaceous envelope 
y whic € shapeless mass of its trunk is covered is very thin but full of li h 
slightest wound we can make in it, there bursts forth an aboses i pg eb 
_ oP coming cy the herbacious envelope which answe 
and which, so to speak, has been the principal focus of i 
has a vegetation analogous to that of sat : Ts CS Sena de sane lag 
soil but from the air by their whole surface 
urlan so much esteemed to the eastward is said by 
* * . . R i 8 
Ing quality; and liable to excite inflammatory derangements a 
} of the system. Whether these 
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 frui 
dant, it forms a principal article of food amon ihe waliees say a 
7 : De 
made of corn, and called Rooy, Mr, Bowdich further obesrves, that ¢ this tree loses i 
vir «dishes with it, especially a kind of gruel 
ts leaves before the periodical rains come on. 
ssesse i i 4 
po ih cotta acid flavour, and, being very abun 
