ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 287 



Senegal, trunks of which he estimated the circumference at seven- 

 teen fathoms, or 102 feet (Ramusio, vol. i. p. 109) : he might have 

 compared them with Dragon-trees which he had seen before. Per- 

 rottet says in his " Flore de Se'negambie" (p. 76), that he had seen 

 monkey-bread trees which, with a height of only about 70 or 80 

 feet, had a diameter of 32 English feet. The same dimensions had 

 been given by Adanson, in the account of his voyage in 1748 ; the 

 largest trunks which he himself saw (in 1749) in one of the small 

 Magdalena islands near Cape de Verde, and in the vicinity of the 

 mouth of the Senegal River, were from 26 to 28 English feet in 

 diameter, with a height of little more than 70 feet, and a top about 

 180 feet broad; but he adds at the same time, that other travellers 

 had found trunks of nearly 32 English feet diameter. French and 

 Dutch sailors had cut their names on the trees seen by Adanson, in 

 letters half a foot long ; the dates added to the names showed these 

 inscriptions to be all of the 16th century, except one which belonged 

 to the 15th. (In Adanson' s " Families des Plantes," 1763, p. i. pp. 

 ccxv.-ccxviii., it stands as the 14th century, but this is doubtless an 

 error of inadvertence.) From the depth of the inscriptions, which 

 were covered with new layers of wood, and from the comparison of 

 the thickness of different trunks of the same species in which the 

 relative age of the trees was known, Adanson computed the probable 

 age of the larger trees, and found for a diameter of 32 English feet 

 5150 years. (Voyage au Senegal, 1757, p. 66.) He prudently 

 adds (I do not alter his curious orthography) : "Le calcul de Taje 

 de chake couche n'a pas d'exactitude g&>metrike." In the village 

 of G-rand Galarques, also in Senegambia, the negroes have orna- 

 mented the entrance of a hollow Baobab tree with sculptures cut out 

 of the still fresh wood ; the interior serves for holding meetings in 

 which their interests are debated. Such a hall of the assembly re- 

 minds one of the hollow or cave (specus) of the plane tree in Lycia, 

 in which Lucinius Mutianus, who had previously been consul, feasted 

 with twenty-one guests. Plino (xii. 3) assigns to such a cavity in a 

 hollow tree the somewhat large allowance of a breadth of eighty 

 Roman feet. The Baobab was seen by Rene Caillie in the valley of 

 the Niger near Jenne, by Caillaud in Nubia, and by Wilhelm Peters 

 along the whole eastern coast of Africa (where it is called Mulapa, 



