270 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



both in appearance and taste, resembles macaroni ; upon the bark being soaked in 

 hot water an agreeable mucilaginous drink was also produced. This and other 

 earlier references to this tree, conjoined with the fact that the corresponding fruit of 

 the allied African species, Adansonia digitata, is also highly appreciated by the natives, 

 and has at times, as in the case of Major Pedley when searching for Mungo Park, 

 sufficed as the sole nutriment to Europeans for many days, would seem to justify 

 the anticipation that the Western Australian Baobab is a tree abounding in latent 

 possibilities, and well worthy the attention of specialists in economic botany. 



The dimensions of the Baobab or Bottle-tree, combined with its exceedingly 

 slow rate of growth, indicate that it must attain to a very considerable antiquity. 

 King has attested to an individual tree which measured no less than 85 feet in 

 circumference, and it has been recorded of an example raised under favourable 

 conditions at Kew that it took eight years to grow to a height of 4 feet. The 

 celebrated Dragon-tree of Orotava, Teneriffe, belonging to the same family group of 

 the Sterculariacese, which was finally destroyed by a hurricane in the year 1867, had 

 an age of no less than 5,000 or 6,000 years ascribed to it by Humboldt. Up to the 

 date of its destruction it was pronounced by Sir John Herschel and other authorities 

 to be probably the oldest tree in the world. 



The tenacity of life of the Adansonia rupestris is well evidenced by 

 examples that were hewn down many years since during the process of road-making 

 around the township of Derby, Western Australia. The trunks, though literally denuded 

 by the axe of every root and branch, have been by no means deprived of their vitality, 

 and are in many instances putting out fresh branches which, time permitting, will constitute 

 new trees. In. the adjacent bush or so-called "pindan" where the tree abounds, it 

 is, indeed, by no means an uncommon sight to see a trunk prostrated, probably 

 centuries ago by some abnormal storm, out of which a fresh tree has reared itself 

 phcenix-like with renewed youth and vigour. 



An example of the rejuvenescent properties possessed by this tree is afforded 

 by the preceding photographic reproduction, wherein three vigorous independent 

 trees are, as it were, growing up from the erstwhile apparently wrecked and prostrate 

 trunk. The adage "As the tree falls so shall it lie" does not at all events apply 

 to the Western Australian Baobab, or it is at any rate one of the brilliant 

 exceptions that seemingly exist to prove the rule in most mundane matters. It is 

 a rare thing to see an actually dead Baobab. The only veritable occasion of such 

 mortality present to the author's mind is the example reproduced in the accompanying 



