304 THE TAMARIND TREE. 



readily than in Ceylon, where there are many striking 

 examples of it; for instance the peach and other trees 

 of the temperate zone have there turned into evergreens. 

 That the Baobab may have become " a fast growing 

 tree" in Ceylon, need not therefore surprise us. It 

 merely proves that it is one of those trees whose 

 nature has changed upon its introduction into that 

 island, and in consequence we are not at all surprised 

 to hear that it is there " a short-lived tree. " But the 

 improbability that these gigantic specimens of it 

 should be so also, in the dry desert regions spoken 

 of by Sir Samuel Baker and others, must strike every 

 thoughtful mind. There, though there is a season of 

 luxuriant growth, its very shortness would render the 

 existence of fast-growing trees impossible. Moreover, 

 all the desert trees and shrubs, so far as we know, 

 are distinguished by a peculiarly slow and dwarfish 

 form of growth: as evidenced by their compact appear- 

 ance and the shortness of their twigs. We therefore 

 still believe the views of the distinguished German 

 philosopher Humboldt to be correct, and that those of 

 his modern commentators, in this instance at least, have 

 been arrived at upon insufficient and fallacious data. 



Another of the magnificent productions of the dry 

 regions of the bush country is the Tamarind tree 

 (Tamarindus Indicd>), which we feel we ought by no 

 means to pass over without a few words of notice. It 

 is, as its name denotes, indigenous in our Indian 

 Empire (but it is also widely spread over other regions, 

 in Africa and elsewhere, in general strictly within the 

 Tropical Zone), and to our mind there forms one of the 

 chief glories of its botanical treasury. Sir Samuel Baker, 

 for instance, considered it one of the handsomest trees 



