136 APPENDIX C. 



Baobab in its first year, measured from an inch 

 to an inch and a half in diameter ; that at the 

 end of ten years it reached a foot in diameter ; 

 and at the end of twenty, about a foot and a 

 half. These data, he adds, are insufficient for 

 any precise determination ; he, therefore, limits 

 himself to suspecting that the growth of the 

 Baobab, which is very slow with relation to its 

 monstrous size (of twenty-five feet diameter) 

 must continue for several thousand years, and 

 perhaps ascend to the time of the deluge ; so 

 that we have good reason to believe that the 

 Baobab is the most ancient of the living monu- 

 ments which the terrestrial globe can furnish. 

 These particulars are given in a 'Description 

 d'un Arbre d'un nouveau genre, appele Baobab, 

 observe au Senegal,' published by Adanson in 

 the Memoires de VAcademie des Sciences, for 

 1761, where he also states the circumference of 

 the tree as reaching to sixty-five feet, or even 

 seventy-seven and a half feet, making its dia- 

 meter somewhat less than twenty-five feet. In 

 his ' Voyage au Senegal,' he speaks, p. 54-5, 

 of having measured two trunks of sixty-five feet 

 and sixty -three feet circumference ; and again, p. 

 104, of two others measuring seventy-six and 

 seventy-seven feet, but it does not appear that 

 these were the trunks on which the names were 

 cut. 



