THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 105 



and a taste which make it to be much sought after 

 by the natives. Like the bees, poets and musicians 

 also are entombed by many African tribes in the 

 trunks of baobabs. In the eyes of Africans, how- 

 ever, these are not tombs of honor ; and the reason 

 why they give their poets and musicians this strange 

 place of sepulchre is the belief that their gifted 

 brethren are in communication with spirits. They 

 have a superstitious horror of their remains, and will 

 not bury them in the earth that brings forth their 

 food, nor in the channels of rivers. It is difficult to 

 form an idea of the space which these trunks enclose ; 

 some of them could hold 240 men, Besides using 

 them as places of sepulchre, the natives employ them 

 for other purposes; they sometimes encamp within 

 them, and at other times use them as stables. 



Adanson has calculated the age of these trees by 

 the depth of certain notches made upon them by 

 sailors of the fifteenth century, who cut their names 

 in the bark in letters of considerable size ; he exam- 

 ined the new layers of wood which had covered 

 these notches, and compared their thickness with that 

 of trunks of the same kind, the age of which was 

 known. " He has found," says Humboldt, " for a diam- 

 eter of .about 30 feet, an age of 5,150 years." He has, 

 however, had the prudence to add these words: 

 " The calculation of the age of each layer cannot be re- 

 garded as mathematically exact." In the village of 

 Grand Galarques, situated also in Senegambia,the ne- 

 groes have ornamented the hollow of a baobab with 

 carvings cut in the wood. The interior space serves 



