445 



must have been small and in a bad state, being probably such as are 

 used at Senegal for no other purpose than making soap. The author 

 considers the figure given by Alpinus to have been drawn from ima- 

 gination, but remarks that Clusius contented himself with represent- 

 ing only what he saw. Clusius says that he received the fruit under 

 the names of ahavo and abavi, from persons who had it from English 

 sailors returning from Ethiopia, or rather from the coast of Guinea or 

 Senegal : he also says that the Portuguese call the fruit calehacera. 

 Scaliger gives a very short description of the fruit, brought from Mo- 

 zambique under the name oi guanahimus. After stating that all the 

 above-named authors are cited in Bauhin's Pinax, Adanson observes 

 that M. Lippi's manuscript remarks ought not to be passed over in si- 

 lence. This learned traveller, who was the victim of a voyage into 

 Abyssinia, undertaken by order of Louis XIV. during a period of tu- 

 mult and revolution in that country, gives a much more accurate de- 

 scription of the fruit of the Baobab, which he saw at Cairo, whither 

 it had been brought from Upper Egypt, than any author who had 

 preceded him. After a wai-m eulogium on M. Lippi, Adanson con- 

 cludes his admirable memoir by stating that it is evident, from the 

 passages quoted, that the authors cited were acquainted only with the 

 fruit and leaves of the Baobab, but that they had no knowledge of its 

 flowers or of the tree which bore them, the monstrous size of which 

 presents a fact the most remarkable which the history of Botany and 

 perhaps that of the world can furnish. 



Geo. Luxford. 

 65, Ratcliff Highway, 



December 17, 1842. 



Art. CVIII. — Note on the Sands of Barry, and on Equisetum 

 variegatum. By Mr. J. B. Brichan. 



I HAD lately an opportunity of examining the locality named above, 

 and as Equisetum variegatum there assumes a somewhat different ap- 

 pearance from that which it presents on Deeside, the few remarks I 

 have to offer will forai an appropriate sequel to my paper on the three 

 allied Equiseta, (Phytol. 369). Whether or not the spot in which I 

 found the plant is the same in which it was found by Don, I am un- 

 able to say ; having no guide and no information, I rather stumbled 

 upon it than searched it out, and though I went over a considerable 



